


An Unidentified Body in Homer, Alaska

by lapsi



Series: Case-By-Case [3]
Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Case Fic, Graphic Description of Corpses, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Infidelity, Period Typical Bigotry, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:15:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 57,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22218427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapsi/pseuds/lapsi
Summary: Funded by robust sales of his autobiography, Holden Ford has relocated to a remote Alaskan town to pursue leads on an obscure unsolved death. Bill is not the only person concerned by the seemingly rash decision.But how do you limit obsession in a man like Holden Ford?
Relationships: Holden Ford/Bill Tench
Series: Case-By-Case [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1141013
Comments: 225
Kudos: 226





	1. Chapter 1

It could be the helm of a tide-beached fishing trawler. Weathered, faded red still strikes a harsh contrast to ubiquitous winter snow. The A-frame is hedged in by banks of dully gleaming white, a shoveled out driveway splitting off towards another more distant home up the rising hillside.  
  
Bill double checks the address, despite the fact that the house precisely matches the polaroid Kathy had showed him. The few windows that he can see aren’t exactly shining beacons of welcome, though he supposes the sun is still up, albeit behind a mass of grey blue cumulus. Someone might be inside.  
  
He pulls off the snow-banked main road and steers the hire car towards the cabin. He has to park sooner than he hoped, near the base of the hillside. He turns off the engine. The desert-dry blast of heating ceases alongside the crackly radio. No other car to be seen-- not that Holden drives, as far as Bill knows. Maybe that’s the shape of a tarp-covered motorcycle beneath the cabin’s overhang.  
  
Bill drums fingertips on the rapidly cooling steering wheel and squints up at the pointed roof, rising before him like an undersized cathedral. The nervousness he has simply not allowed himself to feel threatens an emergence. Holden hasn’t been heard from for a full fortnight, and very little before that. This building before him is hardly bustling with life.  
  
He pushes open the car door, lest he surrender entirely to fearful inaction. The wind isn’t howling, but it’s cold to the point of near pain against all exposed skin. He locks the car with already numbing fingers, habit rather than concern about opportunistic car thieves. Bill shoves his hands into deep pockets, cautiously testing the compacted snow as he ascends the white slope.  
  
The door is also faded red, above a square of unpainted, weathered timber with a snow-tinged wire doormat. Bill doesn’t need to summon resolve to knock; through the wooden walls he can hear approaching footsteps.  
  
Then the heavy, felt-lined door is opened inwards. Bill recognises the vague impression of Holden in the relative darkness, the wave of a hand ushering him inside. He obliges, finding himself crowded into a little landing before a set of stairs up. The younger man is leaning back into the coat rack, looking up perplexed.  
  
Holden is wearing a chunky woolen sweater, and over it a sheepskin lined, wool dressing gown. Could almost be dressed down, if not for the slacks, the impeccable hair, the cleanshaven jaw. _Who the hell is he getting himself ready for every morning out here?  
  
_ “Did you drive from Anchorage?” Holden is asking slowly, tilting his job-interview-ready head. Behind him, above the dip of steps, a downturned lamp reveals an underway investigation metastasized to every surface of the cabin’s interior. There’s the welcoming smell, and warmth, of a wood fire.  
  
Bill nods. He pulls his stiff hands from his coat pockets, massaging life back into the unyielding knuckles. Then he can ease the down sports jacket off. He feels more relief than he’d like to at the sight of Holden Ford’s too familiar face.  
  
The answered question does nothing to ease Holden’s curious squinting, but eventually the kid seems to remember his manners. He traipses up the handful of stairs, and gestures towards a fire-side armchair, mercifully unburdened with case notes. “Well, sit down, and I’ll talk you through--”  
  
“Holden, I am not here to assist you with your…” Bill’s outstretched fingers fling haphazardly towards the scanner, the corkboard, the piles of documentation as he marches through the cabin. “I’m here on a welfare check.”  
  
“... _right._ You came all this way to ask me to give Kathy a call,” Holden says, in smiling disbelief. He’s leaning over to scoop up what appears to be an autopsy report, extending it in Bill’s direction without looking-- immediately, back over the desk to sift through tidal charts with his other hand.  
  
Bill doesn’t take the folder being thrust over at chest height. “I’m in Alaska to liaison with the local police on an unrelated case.”  
  
Holden’s fascinated stare raises like an automaton carnival game powering up. “The Jane Doe in Eklutna?” he asks without really asking. “I actually have some thoughts on--”  
  
Bill turns in frustration, pacing away, then back with a hand raised. “Holden, you disappeared off to some backwater tundra during an Alaskan winter. So, yes, I did come all this way to check on you. No, I don’t want your investigative notes. Put them down.”  
  
“I’m sure the residents of Homer would be disgruntled to hear you describe their lovely town as a ‘backwater tundra’,” Holden says mildly as he straightens his files and his fatigue-green typewriter. He turns his back on Bill and wanders to a tiny kitchen bench, tilting coffee into a speckled red, hand-thrown mug. For a moment, he’s framed by the crossed snowshoes on the mantle; his form is winged like an unusual insect.  
  
“Don’t-- don’t play games with me right now,” Bill tries not to snap. “I don’t have the energy.”  
  
“‘Games’? Bill, I’m just confused. Your concern is touching, but I’m fine. Of course I’m fine. I’m writing. I’m healthy, focussed, ...medicated. Honestly, I’m sorry to have wasted your time, and gas money on this trip out of Anchorage. I can reimburse you for--”  
  
“I don’t need your money.”  
  
Holden’s finer details disappear into the steam of his coffee mug. “The story I’ve been selling is as much yours as mine. It would hardly be charity, if I handed off some of the profits your way. Well-earned recompense, really. Would you like some coffee?”  
  
“No. And we’ve had this discussion before. In front of my wife,” Bill adds, regretting revealing his injured pride the moment the words are out of his mouth. “Stop trying to misdirect me with this already hashed out argument, and listen to what I’m saying. You scared Kathy.”  
  
Holden sighs without a hint of apology. “Bill, you’re in the middle of something you don’t understand. I took some time off from my course, and Kathy has unfounded concerns that--”  
  
“I don’t need the debrief. Kathy relayed her supposedly _unfounded_ concerns to me,” Bill informs him.  
  
Holden gives an insincere smile. He settles down his coffee with gratuitous precision between case files and a folded polaroid camera, takes his time in leaning forward. The performance is bizarrely professional; reminiscent of those first interviews in Winnebago Mental Health. His tone is cajolingly reasonable: “Coming to Alaska was a rational financial decision, not to mention endorsed by my professors and university administration. I had an active case to pursue and document. This is what a true crime writer--”  
  
Bill scoffs.  
  
“That is the genre my book was published as,” Holden retorts quietly, friendly facade slipping momentarily before it is plastered back across his features. “I am a true crime writer. A _successful_ true crime writer.”  
  
“Things can be financially rational, and also stupid. You’re completely geographically isolated from your support networks. You’re putting your life on hold to try to, what, manufacture your next bestseller? This isn’t healthy.”  
  
“I’m trying to solve a homicide,” Holden tells him in a superior tone.  
  
Bill certainly isn’t convinced that the John Doe he’s heard Holden is trying to ID is a homicide case at all, but that’s Holden’s game. Misdirect. Make this a discussion about the case instead of about his personal life. “All by yourself in the middle of fucking nowhere?” _A lonely shut-in, just like when you were trying to solve the Madison case._  
  
Now the arms fold. Holden’s calculated earnestness drops. “I’m thirty-one years old, Bill,” the man opposite informs him, condescending and flippant. “My work requires me to travel. You understand. And _I_ don’t have a wife or a child waiting for me at home, so I’m free to investigate the case from a geographically convenient location.”  
  
Bill raises both eyebrows at what _must_ be an intentional jab. _No. Not getting drawn into that shit either, boy._ “Travel? You’ve been here _two months_ , Holden.”  
  
“And? Is that too much time to spend on solving a crime of this magnitude?”  
  
“If it’s even a--,” Bill starts to finally insist, then reconsiders. Not only off topic, but that argument is shades of the Greenwich case, and the less this discussion harkens back to Greenwich, the better. “It’s too long for a troubled private citizen to spend--”  
  
“' _Troubled’_ ?”  
  
“Yes. Troubled.” Even though they’re alone, Bill finds his voice dropping to an accusatory near-whisper. “What was it? Nine months ago that you nearly fatally poisoned yourself, on purpose? So. Yeah. I’d call that _'_ _troubled'_ \--”  
  
Holden exhales hard, straightens up. “Okay. Nice to see you, Bill. I should get back to my work. I can prepare an updated dossier of my investigation thus far, in case you deign to supply me your opinion on the case. I’ll send it to your office in Virginia, as I assume you’re not staying in town long. Like I said. Wife and child to get back to.”  
  
“Holden,” Bill growls, and regrets his tone. He beats a loose fist against the threadbare armrest of his chair, methodical, calming. _Don’t stand up. This is going to get threatening if you stand up._  
  
Holden is watching warily. Bill notices, now, that he’s wearing dark sheepskin slippers, with thick red cable knit socks peeking at the ankle. Completely discordant with the otherwise pseudo-professional attire.  
  
“The woman I’m leasing this place from gave them to me,” Holden mutters defensively.  
  
Bill realises he must have been staring.  
  
Holden shifts from foot to foot, as if trying to avoid contact with his own footwear. “It’s an Alaskan winter. I wasn’t .... _entirely_ prepared.” The discordantly dressed man finally gives a small, self-effacing smile.

That warm triviality fills the high, rough wood cross beams and the scattered, outdated furniture. The tension is, thankfully, displaced. “Holden, I had no idea what I was coming up here to find,” Bill informs him. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you doing well. Because last time you dropped out of contact for months, you were unmedicated and homeless.”  
  
Bill can’t tell if Holden’s clenched jaw is at the ugliness of the recollection, or at Bill’s nerve in bringing it up.  
  
“You’re very prideful,” Bill continues. “You don’t reach out for help when you need it. If anything, you withdraw. If something goes wrong, silence will be the symptom. And me and Kathy and Em had a whole lot of silence.”  
  
“...Em?” Holden echoes with a new frown. Looks like the first inkling of guilt. “You spoke to Em? She was worried?”  
  
“She said she spoke to you a couple of weeks ago, but you brushed off questions about when you’d be back down to New York. And that you were unreliable with your calls--”  
  
“I can’t call when I’m snowed in. The roads have to be pretty clear for the bike, unless I’m able to get a lift in. And even the town loses connection sometimes,” Holden justifies. “Pylons go down in storms, that sort of thing. Besides, plenty of times I called and Em wasn’t home. She doesn’t have an answering machine, and she works weird hours at the studio. I left a lot of messages with her girlfriend, but maybe those aren’t getting through. Grace doesn’t like me very much--”  
  
“A message saying you called is no good if there’s no way to call you back,” Bill points out.  
  
“I like that I don’t have a phone line here,” Holden rebuts, bitterly. “It’s a good environment for me to work in. To concentrate in. I’m not constantly getting calls from my agent asking me to plug my book on some tedious daytime TV talkshow, or go on another awful book tour. ... _but_ . If this reduced contact is causing concern, I will set in place structures for reliable contact, and schedule regular check-ins.”  
  
Bill nods.  
  
“A free man, yet still on parole,” Holden adds under his breath as he replaces the autopsy report neatly down. A sour addition to what had seemed impeccable practicality.  
  
“Oh, grow up. People caring about you is nothing like being in the prison system,” Bill huffs.  
  
“Drawing from your personal experience of time spent in prison, there, Bill?” Holden’s voice is deceptively casual. Only the tiniest eddies betraying the undercurrent of anger. Bill knows Holden well enough to recognise an attempt at an argument.  
  
“Thanks for the reassurances, Holden,” Bill says, standing, stepping away towards the door. “Call Kathy.”  
  
“Wait, wait-- seriously? You’re leaving? Driving all the way back to Anchorage?” Holden asks, blocking his pathway out.  
  
Bill checks his watch before he nods, even though his plans are hardly ironclad. Spending the night anywhere near Holden Ford is off the cards.  
  
“And you won’t even look over the case?”  
  
“ _Holden._ ”  
  
Holden casts his eyes up in a bemused pseudo-prayer, lips moving softly.  
  
Bill pulls an unimpressed expression at the melodrama, walks right past.  
  
“Okay. Well, it was lovely to see you, Bill,” Holden calls sarcastically after him. “I’ll get right on that regular scheduling of responsible adult check-ups.”  
  
Bill is about to say something falsely pleasant and dismissive when a picture catches his eye. About head height, before the nook of the descending front steps. A young man. A vaguely worried, wide-eyed expression. Dark waves of hair down to his chin, a slightly hooked nose, high cheekbones. Not a photo, but aiming at photorealistic. Not a facial composite. A reanimated sketch of a dead man. “Is that a recent reconstruction?” he asks.  
  
He hears Holden closing the gap, and then an affirmative hum. Out of the corner of his eye, Bill can see Holden regarding the picture too. It’s very prominent, very vivid. Where an individual with different coping mechanisms might hang religious iconography.  
  
“...I commissioned it,” Holden tells him without looking over. “The official police reconstruction was knocked up very hastily, without much forensic input. This one is by Gatliff. She did a full reconstruction of the nose, and the upper left side of his face. A very unusual decay differential between what was submerged and what--”  
  
“Holden, c'mon. I said no case stuff,” Bill murmurs.  
  
Holden lapses back to contemplative silence. He clears his throat before he speaks. “...it’s him. It’s my John Doe,” he says, sounding something like fond.  
  
Bill steps down to pull on his coat, not quite escaping the vulnerable gaze of a long dead man. “Good luck. I doubt you'll need it. And-- and look after yourself, okay?” he adds, frowning back up at the tightly packed cabin interior.  
  
“I am, Bill. This is my version of looking after myself,” Holden tells him from above.  
  
That might actually be true.


	2. Chapter 2

Jim Barney’s hired vehicle is a snow-chained, two-seater truck. Boisterous, functional, crisp white (not the colour Bill would have chosen for visibility in the snow), it is a sharp contrast to the dinky Fairmount Bill had struggled out to Homer in on his first trip to Alaska. Barney is a good driver, if a bit overcautious on anything icy. Not exactly a commonplace road hazard in Georgia, where Jim lived before his relocation to Quantico. He’s also dressed like a Southerner in Alaska; Bill hasn’t seen him without a scarf and gloves, not even indoors. Now, inside the vehicle, with the heating up full, he’s still in his huge beige parka. Not one complaint, though. Jim was a recent addition to the BSU, and he seems to have taken his posting seriously and stoically. Bill has only been up twice, whereas Jim Barney has spent weeks in Anchorage, over three discrete trips.  
  
He’s not the only member of the BSU in the field right now. There’s Bickmore in California, and McArdle in Texas. In all, the BSU has been undergoing some not insignificant expansion. Bill would very much like to believe his recent generous allocation of funding is not the result of Holden Ford’s revised retelling of the Madison case topping the New York Times best sellers list for several consecutive months. Could have been a couple of decades of backbreaking work, could have been solves on several unrelated high profile cases, could have been entirely recognition of the merit in the BSU’s approach to crime-solving. ...could have been.

His fellow FBI agent is staring through the windshield uphappily. Jim Barney’s disapproving frown is growing familiar. Never levelled in his direction, thankfully; it appears in response to the Alaskan weather, here attempting to interfere with their planned site visit. The snow would be unseasonable anywhere else in America, but mid-Spring blizzards aren’t uncommon up here.  
  
Jim indicates, pulling the truck towards a side road through a flutter of disturbed white.  
  
“Are you sure this is the turn off?” Bill queries, referencing his map. _It’s not. Far too early._  
  
There’s a head shake from the driver. “I saw this on my way through last week. Have to show someone else,” Jim says cryptically.

The road carves between two white hillsides of barren scrub and resiliently dense pine. The relentless overcast white of the sky, and the all-encompassing slopes of the bulbous, tree-dotted mountains give the impression of a closed dome. A sealed off snowglobe that has yet to be shaken. The white truck threads forward beneath the scale and weight of it, past a few properties, a gas station, a cluster of mobile homes that surely nobody tries to survive the winter in.  
  
Then Jim pulls to a stop by a white picket fence.  
  
At first, Bill thinks he’s looking at a model town. Brightly painted roofs emerge from a blanket of undisturbed snow. Not quite houses, though. Too long, too squat. The structures sit in neat rows. Each miniature house is in mismatched, bold hues; like newsreel helicopter footage of a town far too nice for such a grisly murder to have occurred within.  
  
Behind the spread, a steepled wooden church with domed, copper ornamentation.  
  
“Russian orthodox came out to try to convert the natives. You end up with--” Jim gestures. “Cultural fusion, I guess you’d call it.”  
  
“So they’re… grave markers?” Bill asks, head tilted. “They look awfully jolly.”  
  
“I spoke to one of the priests last time I drove past. I was just asking to put up some forensic reconstruction posters, see if the locals recognised our Eklutna Doe. They believe in a forty day period between death and the soul departing. So, they’ll put a blanket over the bodies, then construct these… well, they call them spirit houses. The colours are all to do with family,” Barney says. “House colours, I understand. Something like a coat of arms.”  
  
Bill leans over to examine a half-collapsed structure close to the fence line. Blue and green paint chipping off, the wood wind-beaten beneath. “And after forty days?”  
  
“Tradition of the native people. Everything from the earth returns to the earth. The family builds them, and then they let ‘em crumble.”  
  
Bill nods, finding himself transfixed by the oddity of the graveyard. He scours the empty road then lets himself through a ice-steeped gate. There, he makes his way into the midst of the bizarre, pristine field of emerging bright rooftops.  
  
He hears the crunching of snow as Barney follows him into the fray. The contemplative silence soon abates. “So, Holden Ford. An old friend of yours?” Barney asks, apropos of nothing.  
  
Bill wishes his past with Holden was less fraught, less ongoing. It would be nice to not react to the name as if to close quarter gunshots. Hopefully, he hid most of his shock simply by having his back turned. He clears his throat before he speaks. “Something like that. He contacted you about the drowning case, huh?”  
  
“Possible drowning. Yeah.” There’s a beat, and when Bill doesn’t say anything, Jim adds: “No water in the lungs.”  
  
Bill’s brows raise. He counsels himself on the sensibility of disinterest and distance. He cannot manage either. He turns to face Jim. “It was ruled a drowning without… water in the lungs?” he asks, disbelieving.  
  
Barney doesn’t seem to be aware of the grenade he’s thrown between them, into a bloodbath of FBI agents and fascinating memorials. His tone is matter-of-fact-- an explanation and no more. “Ford spoke to a forensic pathologist in Hawaii, kinda an expert on drowning cases. A lot of people drown in Hawaii. Tourists who’ve never stepped foot in the ocean, boozy nightimes swims, non-swimmers taking hired boats out and going overboard. Now, you’d think… drowning, obvious enough. You look for water in the lungs, froth around the alveoli, that sort of thing. Well, not always. According to our drowning expert, you’re looking at around ten percent of all drowning deaths that occur without water in the lungs upon autopsy,” Barney relays. “You dealt with a drowning case recently?”  
  
Bill wonders if he should be showboating here. No, Jim isn’t that sort of guy, and neither is he. “I mean, no. Not recently,” he admits. He passes one of the spirit houses. A pink, bubbled cresting sits atop the very freshly constructed roof. He can’t decide what it reminds him of. “Tend to get called in on violent crime.”  
  
Jim nods non-judgmentally. “So, first stage of drowning, typically. Laryngospasm. Contraction of the vocal chords. Basically, airways get sealed off. You see water enter the stomach, usually, but not the lungs. Then, people black out. Around this time is when you actually see water entering the lungs.”  
  
Bill pauses his examination of a particularly decayed blue grave marker to squint back at the man following him. “But not-- not necessarily?”  
  
Barney gives a tight smile. He has a certain expression of mild distaste when discussing human death, a thorough contrast to Holden’s borderline mania. “Not necessarily. Right,” he agrees, turning to fully face Bill. His heavy snow boots are completely submerged now, in the drift backing onto a yellow and green house. “If they die of oxygen deprivation before the larynx relaxes, you have a ‘dry drowning’-- no water in the airway, just like John Doe.”  
  
“And that’s ten percent of all drowning cases? ...so, doesn’t it follow that you’ve found a way to explain away all the weirdness in the Homer case?”  
  
Barney tilts a gloved hand back and forth. “That ten percent means that the local path lab didn’t label it a homicide. Plenty of accidental drownings, in water this cold. It’s so cold, you can involuntarily inhale a lungful just hitting it, if you fall face first. Even if you don’t, your chances don’t look good. Too cold to swim in; your body locks up, and then you sink.”  
  
Bill tries to imagine it. He’s been in some very cold water before, mostly as a reckless, invulnerable kid. Beer runs off the base invariably ended with a dozen chest-puffing, drunken boys-who-would-be-men submerged in frigid river water, glinting under a bright country moon. Cold so sore it felt like your soul was being evicted from whatever you weren’t moving. Did they swim in winter? He can’t remember breaking through ice.  
  
Finally, Jim Barney has moved on to his pitch: “And that means we’re not going to get an official go ahead on involvement unless someone with enough sway to tip over an ocean liner calls Quantico.”  
  
“Ah,” is all Bill says. He finds his cigarettes, then reconsiders smoking around such precious cultural heritage. The urge for a cigarette wins; he paces away from the spirit houses and from Jim Barney.  
  
“Bill,” comes the call from behind, a little exasperated. “That’s the case against involvement.”  
  
Bill’s lighter struggles valiantly against the buffeting wind. He takes a drag, reminding himself of Barney’s good character, and that he himself has been suckered into being an errand boy for Holden Ford. “I take it you found the ‘case for’ compelling,” he tells Jim, through his teeth and the cigarette.  
  
“Enough to be boring you with the details of dry drownings, yeah,” Jim says, calm, arms folded. “This is the sort of case that matters to nobody, Bill. Unrecognised individual, plausible explanation as to accidental death, next to no press attention. Nobody, not family, not the local paper, is hounding LE about this investigation. It’s a miracle that there’s some private investigator up here digging into it.”  
  
“PI?” Bill says, disparagingly. “He’s a writer.”  
  
Barney seems completely unconvinced by the truth. “He’s, what? Twenty six, seven? And he’s written one book, as I understand it about a crime he helped solve. That makes him a PI. At any rate, he’s hardly quitting his dayjob to write gratuitous slasher fiction,” Jim reassures. “Which is the concern with writers, no?”  
  
Bill’s eyes widen as he processes the implication of the words. “Wait, you-- you haven’t read his book? It’s the Madison case, Jim. He was the one behind bars.”  
  
“...what, the schizophrenic? The one who spent a couple of decades in a mental hospital?” Jim Barney asks disbelievingly. “But he’s...”  
  
“It was-- it was one decade,” Bill corrects, rubbing a developing pressure point between his eyes. His tone is policed, but there’s anger riling up like a rawhide war drum. _‘The schizophrenic’._ He tries to remind himself that he too, in all likelihood, used the same language early in the Madison case. “He does have schizophrenia, but he’s been in remission for a long time. Wasn’t medicated when he was arrested. When he’s medicated, it’s not a problem.” Probably coming off too defensive, he decides.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
Bill smokes, tries to read the other FBI agent’s expression without being caught looking.  
  
“You were on the Madison case, right?” Jim says, preoccupied. “ _That’s_ how you know him. He mentioned a poisoning case, I assumed, uh--”  
  
Bill is so thoroughly relieved by Jim Barney’s aversion to gossip and intrigue that any nonsensical rage is whipped away with his cigarette smoke. “I worked that too.”  
  
Barney is scratching the back of his head, beneath the hooded parka. He seems to be squaring away the new information very rapidly. “I work with crime every day. I don’t go reading about it in my limited free time,” he murmurs, mild embarrassment showing now. “...I should have looked into him more.”  
  
“He didn’t mention it?” Bill asks, beginning to frown about Holden’s conduct.  
  
“Haven’t really spoken to him about anything other than the case. He seems very… what’s the polite term? Single-minded?” Jim says. “Maybe private, I suppose. He wasn’t asking me a lot of questions about myself either. I thought he was trying to be professional.”  
  
Bill chuckles. “Knowing Holden Ford, he probably already had a dossier on you.”  
  
Jim arches an eyebrow. “On an FBI agent?”  
  
“Oh, yeah. Not, you know, oppo research,” Bill placates, immediately. He’s really not trying to throw Holden under the bus. ...he thinks. “He would have looked up your achievements, that sort of thing. Measure your worthiness as an investigative ally. Clearly, you passed the test.”  
  
Jim nods to himself, though does not seem entirely placated of the notion. “You know him pretty well,” he suggests, unfortunately discerning.  
  
Bill shrugs and returns to the distraction of his struggling cigarette. “I mean, I was trying to get the guy for an additional triple homicide when we met. Doctor Carr and I interviewed him, did some psychological profiling. I do my homework on men like that.”  
  
“...and?” Jim asks. “What was the profile? What’s your opinion of him?”  
  
“He’s-- look, I don’t know why he’s on this particular crusade. I can tell you it’s not a cash grab, if you couldn’t already figure that out from how low profile this case is. Likewise, I don’t think he wants renown; if anything, he’s up here avoiding renown.”  
  
Barney is still turning over his own thoughts. “It explains some questions I had, that’s for sure. Money, for one. Guessing he got a handsome settlement from the department that locked him up all that time. I don’t know the exact figures of his out-of-pocket research expenses, but the expert opinions he’s been getting can’t be cheap. He wants to pay for a second autopsy, too. I had him down for some moralistic trust fund kid.”  
  
“Actually, he kinda got screwed with the settlement,” Bill tells him, brow wrinkled at the memory. “He’s very--his book is everywhere. I can’t avoid the fucking thing. You’ve really never seen it?”  
  
Jim gives an amused grimace. “Guess I haven’t been looking.”  
  
Bill inhales tobacco and holds for a long time. He blows it away, then speaks very seriously. “My opinion of Holden Ford is ...he should be law enforcement. Due to his unfortunate circumstances, he isn’t. And because he isn’t, he hasn’t learned procedure, hasn’t learned how to formulate a legally indictable case, hasn’t learned how to interrogate his own hypotheses in a meaningful way. But, you know. He’s smart. He’s determined. He cares.”  
  
The compliments hang between them for far too long, defying the hurrying wind. Jim Barney is looking thoughtfully back towards the lively world of spirit houses. There’s a cold gust down the back road, and it shakes him to attention. He shivers. “We should…” Jim gestures towards the car, already picking across the dangerously slick gravel road.  
  
Bill stubs his cigarette butt between the heel of his new snow boots and fresh white snow, and he follows.

  
  
“Well, that ...misunderstanding aside,” Barney finally resumes, as they turn back onto the surprisingly busy highway, “I think the evidence is-- I think he’s done a good job.”  
  
Bill waits for a qualifier. None comes. “Yeah?”  
  
“I mean, he’s not-- not crazy,” Jim says, seeming to seek some assurance. “The schizophrenia isn’t an ongoing issue, the way you talk about it.”  
  
Bill nods again, hoping he’s telling the truth. Now, he can’t help himself: “So, what’s Ford’s case? Why does he think this warrants a criminal investigation?”  
  
Jim hides most of a smile with a head check as he merges lanes. “If you look in--” he points towards the back seat, and Bill at once stretches himself back for the indicated folder.  
  
His first attempt to drag the notes over sends it to the floor. He curses, shoulders catching between the front seats when he tries to lean back through and pick it up. Eventually, between two cold-clumsy fingertips, he yanks the elastic-sealed manilla his way. “Is this your write up?” he asks Jim, trying to stifle too heavy breathing.  
  
“Copy of Ford’s research,” Jim Barney says. “I don’t want to spend too much time on this without any official go-ahead. ...there’s the occasional annotation from me.”  
  
Bill unhooks the elastic binding and splays the file over his knees. First comes the autopsy, that Holden had tried to hand him over a month ago. He takes his time with it. The pictures of John Doe are unrecognisable when compared to the lifelike reconstruction Holden had on his wall. Peeking from underneath a t-shirt and jeans is something hardly human. Bloating, patches of decay, discolouration both from decomp and from cyanosis, wet slimy skin that Bill can all but smell through the page. Then the nitty-gritty: both insect activity and that of aquatic life, analysis of all post-mortem lesions and abrasions. A section dedicated to a small tattoo of an eagle on his chest, and the letter ‘B’ on his wrist. Both are recreated in sketches by the pathologist, thankfully, as they are hard to make out on the black-and-white, photocopied photographs of mottled, misshapen skin. Estimates of two months since the time of death, with decomposition patterns unusual due to the extremely cold conditions. Finally, the ruling. An accidental drowning.  
  
“Guessing Ford thinks five pages is not a thorough enough autopsy report,” Bill surmises.  
  
Barney laughs through closed lips.  
  
Bill thumbs through the next stapled chunk of papers, which appears to be somewhat redacted police documentation of the investigation. He’s on a sentence about drag-netting the area the body was first spotted in, when he’s jolted out of study by a brief wail of a police siren.  
  
Jim glances in the rearview. His expression is tight, then relaxes with recognition. He pulls cautiously into the deeper snow piled on the side of the highway.  
  
The quilted windcheater precedes the man wearing it. It’s a drab grey, and would be very professional without the green and red diamond stitched patches across the shoulders. The man wearing it is chuckling as he walks from his squad car, waves jauntily towards them.  
  
“Is that police issue?” Jim says with a sporting smile, as he cranks his window lower.  
  
“It’s a ski jacket,” Detective Tom Curley says, clipped syllables as if he’s trying to let out as little warmth as possible between his gritted teeth. He’s in his late forties, but blonde hair and a baby face make him look like an overgrown schoolyard troublemaker. Not to mention being at least a foot shorter than Bill when they met on Bill’s first trip to Anchorage.  
  
“Looks warm. Weather like this, not a whole lot else counts,” Jim excuses, all good manners despite the terse response.  
  
Curley steps around the hood of the car, towards the passenger side window. Bill cranks down his window, trying not to knock the open file off his lap. He notices the close regard it’s getting from the detective.  
  
“Hello, Detective,” Bill greets.  
  
“Bill. Recognised the hired ride. Thought I’d come say hi, see where you all were headed to,” the man says with a less-closed-lip smile. “What’ve you got there? Some new FBI research?”  
  
“Different case. A floater.”  
  
“Ah. The DB out by Homer,” Curley asserts, squinting down at an autopsy photo. “The one that author is working on. ...not connected to the Eklutna case, though.”  
  
“No?” Bill asks mildly.  
  
“Well, it was six years ago. And I think, if he had access to a boat, he’d be using it more. To dump bodies,” the detective informs him.  
  
“You think?” Bill prods, hearing an echo of Holden in the assertion. “Body turned up, didn’t it? Could be he decided it wasn’t a reliable disposal method.”  
  
Curley shrugs. “I mean, there are other differences. For one, it’s a man. Two, cause of death. Jane Doe was stabbed.”  
  
“Right. Say, did you work the Homer case?” Bill asks, going for his cigarettes.  
  
Curley nods, hands back in the pockets of his very loud ski jacket. “Let’s talk about this somewhere comfortable,” he suggests. “If you’d follow me--”  
  
“We were going to look at the dump site,” Jim Barney interjects across the car’s interior. “For the case we’ve actually been assigned,” he adds, wry and self-deprecating.  
  
Curley reveals a tiny frown, forehead creases weak and defying his age, and then he shakes his head. “Look around. Imagine this, but there.”  
  
Barney responds with a friendly, equivocating shrug. “I mean, in all likelihood, you’re right. But, if you don’t mind--”  
  
“Trust me. I come up here all the time. Do my paperwork sitting in my car,” the policeman says, and then seems to regret saying as much. “Look, it’s-- there’s a lot of empty out here. And that empty looks the same as any other. Trees. Snow. Couple of power lines passing over. As much as I want there to be more--”  
  
“Maybe we could schedule a sit down tomorrow,” Bill suggests, tapping ash out the window to preserve the file still sitting across his lap. “Good to get a feel for the disposal site if nothing else. Maps and crime scene photos never quite cut it.”  
  
“...sure. Give it a good going over, by all means. I’ll give you my card, Agent,” the detective says, finally obliging. He pulls off his gloves to do so, then hurries them back on. “Call me when you get back to town, we’ll iron out the details,” he adds, slapping the roof of the car in lieu of a farewell.  
  
Bill slides the card into his wallet, sure he already has the contact details. He wonders exactly how coordinated Holden’s strategy across law enforcement has been that everyone has an opinion on the Homer case. Or maybe everyone has the same opinion: Holden’s opinion.  
  
He almost misses Barney’s brief scowl as he is restarting the car, glances over to see the younger agent rapidly conceal the expression. Bill opens his mouth, then closes it.  
  
There’s a beat of silence, Jim watching the squad car peel off back towards Anchorage. “Don’t see a whole lot of black FBI up here, I suppose,” he says by way of explanation, as he starts the car. He seems to regret it. “I’ll spare you the whole pitch on the case being homicide, if you’re getting it tomorrow from Curley,” he adds. “He’s good on the details.”  
  
“Thank you. ...is he-- is he a problem to work with?” Bill asks, cautiously.  
  
“Detective Curley? He seems like competent police,” Jim says, crisply.  
  
Bill considers that as he references his street map. The body disposal site is a vivid red cross, still miles ahead of them. “If he’s a problem, I’ll get us a different police liaison,” he offers, eyes down on the map. “If you tell me he’s a problem, Jim, that’s enough,” he adds.  
  
Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees Jim slowly nod. “I’ll let you know,” he replies, staring ahead at the road. Then, the barest hint of a smile.

The dump site takes most of an hour to find; it is both unremarkable and obscured by about a foot of snow. Eventually, Jim triangulates it by the distinctive high voltage lines overhead. They drive, then trudge on foot, up a hillside. Then they trudge down, unilluminated.

  
  
Bill’s car is still parked at Jim’s motel (in a much nicer suburb than the motel Bill booked over the phone) and Bill drives them back, to spare Jim the dusky, snow-dusted road. They say their perfunctory goodbyes, and Bill somewhat reluctantly carries a copy of the Homer Doe case back towards his own car. There, he pauses. In the corner of the lot is a motorcycle. _Who else is stupid enough to get around on a bike in Alaska?_ Bill turns, paces back towards the stairwell he saw Jim Barney disappear into.  
  
The urgent voice bouncing down the stairwell is unmistakable, even if the bike wasn’t a dead giveaway. “--found someone for the tattoo ink. An expert out of New Mexico, looks at trace amounts in removed tats, mostly gang stuff,” an unseen Holden is saying. “But it’s getting to about the point where it’s exhume or bust.”  
  
Bill rounds the concrete stairwell, looks up at Jim Barney stuck with a room key in hand and a bemused expression on his face. Opposite, Holden Ford.  
  
Holden is wearing an open, fur-lined leather bomber jacket, thick around his upper body. Bill thinks a suit beneath it. “Can you really not lean any harder, Jim?” the young man is asking. Bill has never seen Holden like this. Commanding, impatient, professional. Then he finally seems to register that someone is following Barney up the staircase. He peers down the stairwell, expression initially curious. Then, entirely blank. Almost afraid.  
  
Bill reaches the landing. He folds his arms, creasing the thick winter fabric. One steadying breath. “Hello, Holden.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Hello, Bill,” Holden says. The momentary give-away is whitewashed with a suave smile. Then, without any other greeting, he turns back to Barney. “I’ll talk to Anchorage PD. But it’s a whole lot of work, and the forensic re-examination will be seeking to answer questions that do not have a concrete investigative pay-off. We need additional data to even formulate an investigative strategy, Jim. People expect exceptional investigations of the FBI; you’re much better poised to make the sell on the evidentiary value of a more thorough forensic analysis.”  
  
Barney hasn’t yet put away his key. His parka rustles as he turns to behold Bill, expression somewhere between caution and vague amusement. As if to say: ‘This is what I have to deal with.’  
  
“What would the ink tell us?” Bill asks, maybe a little roughly.  
  
Holden seems to be expecting a different question from Bill. Perhaps a better question, judging by the sleek eyebrow raise. Somehow, despite the motorcycle helmet in one hand, his hair is perfect. “...that there was a tattoo...?”  
  
Barney clears his throat. “Haven’t supplied Bill the minutiae of the case, yet. He’s here on the Eklutna Doe.”  
  
“Oh. Of course,” Holden says, both polite and aloof. His eyes have travelled down to the file still in Bill’s hands. “I’m very grateful you’re willing to look the case over, Special Agent Tench,” he adds, with a sunny smile. Without context, it’s a picture perfect show of gratitude. Bill feels like punching the smug look off his face. Equally condescendingly, he begins to explain. “I suspect a tattoo was cut off John Doe’s back post mortem. There’s damage to the skin that seems too regular to be the result of scavengers. Unfortunately, the whole area is extremely damaged by both abrasion and decomposition. Analysis of the tissue for tattoo ink would confirm my suspicion.”  
  
“How could the first autopsy have missed that?” Bill asks, trying to keep his tone level and conversational.  
  
“As I said, the area was damaged,” Holden says, and then, “Once you have a thorough look over the case notes, it’s obvious enough.”  
  
“I don’t think it’s that obvious,” Jim disagrees amenably. “That is to say, there are other explanations for skin being missing.”  
  
“And the blood on the shirt?” Holden asks.  
  
Jim Barney threatens a smile. “Well, Holden, you don’t know that’s blood yet.”  
  
Holden nods a few times. “You’re perfectly right. ...I could only know something like that by virtue of a second autopsy,” he says. Finally, he raises the document wallet in Jim Barney’s direction. “Here’s another case the forensic specialist worked on. A gang killing in New Mexico. Tattoo was cut off, but forensic reconstruction from subcutaneous ink traces led to an identification. It’s a fascinating case. All of Doctor Hartmann’s contact details are in there too, and copies of our correspondence regarding this case.”  
  
The FBI agent does not take the offered file. “Mhm. I’m going to need you to call next time.”  
  
“I did. You weren’t in. I had to travel to Anchorage anyway, to buy typewriter ribbon. When I couldn’t reach you I stopped by to leave a message at reception. I saw your truck pulling in,” Holden effortlessly reassures. “...if this is an intrusion, I will make sure all contact is by phone in future, Special Agent.”  
  
Jim seems not wholly convinced, but mollified. He shrugs vaguely. “I’m getting out of the cold now,” he says, taking the folder out of Holden’s hands unceremoniously. “Night,” he adds, more in Bill’s direction. It’s only evening, but with the sun already setting it’s an understandable characterisation.  
  
“Thank you,” Holden says, sounding fond. He turns as Jim’s motel door closes, giving Bill a very thorough examination. Then, wordlessly, he steps past.  
  
Bill is slower down the covered concrete steps, but catches up in the parking lot. He tries to meet Holden’s eyes, but the young man isn’t slowing down. “Want to explain what’s the attitude about?” Bill asks.  
  
Holden takes several more strides to formulate a response. “If you’re going to hold this case at arm’s length, I’d rather you sit it out, rather than wasting everyone’s time by being an uninformed participant. Re-explaining case details is not a fruitful use of the extremely limited resources available,” comes the clipped explanation.  
  
“Ah. So, it’s not that my presence in Alaska endangers your illusory qualifications?”  
  
Holden stops, finally. “What do you mean, illusory?”  
  
“I don’t appreciate you playing up our connection.”

 _“Excuse me?”_  
  
“Using me to derive authority you do not otherwise have. Jim thought we worked together.”  
  
“We. Did,” Holden enunciates.  
  
“Right. And that’s the full story, huh? Partnering up in Greenwich? ...were you going to avoid telling him about Madison entirely?”  
  
“Avoid telling him _what_ about Madison?” Holden asks, arms now folded confrontationally.  
  
“Anything. _Everything._ He didn’t know who the hell you were. He didn’t know about your book.”  
  
Holden’s lips fall apart. Bill hasn’t seen him at a loss for words recently; every time, it feels like a significant victory. “He… didn’t know… Madison was-- I was-- in Madison?” Holden asks, struggling with his phrasing. Then, the sparkling eyes narrow. “And I suppose you-- you informed him.”  
  
Bill nods, then finds himself justifying: “He should know who he’s agreeing to work with.”  
  
Holden’s rigid hand is growing white knuckled on his motorcycle helmet. “ _Why?_ Why not judge my work on its merits? Why the hell did you have to tell Jim Barney about Madison?”  
  
Bill chuckles without feeling. “Oh, pardon me. Are the contents of your tell-all autobiography supposed to be a closely guarded secret?”  
  
“I-- I wanted to tell my story. That doesn’t mean I lose all right to privacy.”  
  
“Actually, Holden, it sort of does,” Bill informs him, levelly. “You can’t control who buys the book. You can’t control who watches the talk shows you go on. You can’t control the second-hand gossip. If you wanted to tell your story, you would have talked to people you care about. To your shrink. But you and I both know what this book was really about.”  
  
“And what’s the book really about?” Holden asks, all affected composure.  
  
There’s a deadliness concealed in the simple question-- or rather, in any answer Bill might be bold enough to give. He gives one anyway: “The same thing book deals are always about. Getting paid.”  
  
Holden’s long lashes flutter through an exasperated blink. He seems to be genuinely disappointed in Bill, which hurts a great deal more than Bill thought someone could hurt him. He begins to turn away again. “Sure. I knew my story was worth a dollar amount, and I intended to extract that dollar amount. That’s hardly the only reason I--”  
  
Bill catches right up. “So don’t come at me for talking about your history, when _you’re_ the one who monetarized the whole sorry affair into infamy.”  
  
Holden crunches into the snow closer to Bill and for a moment Bill squares up as if anticipating a punch. No blow comes, but Holden is glaring up at him with unrestrained anger. “Don’t blame me for wanting to secure my livelihood in a way that hurt nobody at all,” Holden tautly enunciates.  
  
“Camera crews showed up at my office, Holden. Nancy got so many phone calls she had to change her work number. Even now, Brian asks about-- about why his dad was in Wisconsin, about missing kids, about whether he’s safe to walk to and from school. Because of your book, he’s hearing about things no kid should have to.”  
  
“How, exactly, is he hearing that?” Holden asks, not looking particularly apologetic. “I didn't market the book to preschoolers.”

“It made the news. Parents talk. Kids talk. I told you this book was going to spotlight everyone you wrote about, Holden.”  
  
“I _know_. I’ve been at the epicenter of that goddamn spotlight.”  
  
Bill snorts. “You’ll forgive my callousness on that. You’re the one cashing the checks.”  
  
Holden’s pleasant features give way to an unflattering sneer. “I have been dirt poor my entire life, Bill. I’d show up to class without books, without pencils, ...most days, without lunch. I wore clothing ‘til the seams gave out. I wore broken tennis shoes two sizes too small, that my mother fished out of a church donation bin. They didn't quite fit me when she found them-- and I didn't have another pair of shoes to move to when I outgrew them. It was those shoes or walking to school barefoot. Poverty, poverty like _that_? Avoiding returning to that becomes your life, because it seems inescapable. Anything that requires risk-taking, requires optimism, requires hope for your future? It’s an impossibility. Because you cannot forget what you’ve clawed your way out of. There's a forsaken sinkhole beneath your every step, and you always teeter on the edge, just waiting to fall back. ...I got out of prison three decades into my life with a highschool diploma and zero work experience. Not just under-qualified, but-- but remarkable in the worst way. Schizophrenic. You have no idea what it costs to manage my mental illness, Bill. The cost of opportunities I'll _never_ have because of my mental illness. Now, I didn’t write that book simply to make money. If I had, I would be perfectly justified in that. Try homelessness for a couple of months, Bill. Then see how discriminating you are about how your expenses get paid.”  
  
Bill’s burgeoning sympathy is smothered by Holden’s wilful misunderstanding. “I’m not saying I didn’t want you to make a life for yourself, Holden. But you can’t pretend this is a matter of a financial safety net when you drop out of school, come up to fucking Alaska and splash cash around trying to solve a case pro bono. I don’t see how you can--”  
  
“That was my concern. When I wrote the book. It’s not a concern any more,” Holden says, with a heart-stoppingly cold smile. His teeth are very white, and close to braces even. Must be all genetics; no way a broke kid like Holden was afforded dentistry and orthodontics. Nothing missing from scuffles either, not like that old prison buddy of Holden’s. A handsome smile, that Bill currently considers very ugly. “My desired outcome was financial stability. I have vastly exceeded that.”  
  
Bill scowls. “If you knew the book was selling, why go on the book tours? Why schedule breakfast shows with the bubbly, blonde hosts? Why that fucking New York Times tell-all interview?”  
  
“Ah, so the problem isn’t that I wrote the book. It’s that the book was successful.”  
  
“Sure, Holden. If it had bombed, of course I wouldn’t be complaining about camera crews,” Bill tells him sarcastically. “Don’t try to warp that distinction into something it’s not.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“You’re making out like I-- like I'm hoping you’ll fail. Like I don’t have your best wishes at heart. Like I want you to go back to sleeping in your car. If you recall, I was the one who flew out to Madison to shake your stupid ass out of--” Bill stops speaking, as he realises just what he’s getting close to revisiting. “Let’s not go there.”  
  
“ _I_ didn’t go there,” Holden says with undisguised superiority in his tone.  
  
Bill raises his two hands, trying to keep his tone politic. “I’m allowed to be upset with you for the pressure you’ve put me, and my family under.”  
  
“With the book?”  
  
“Of course with the book.”  
  
“Mhm,” Holden agrees disagreeably. Without a further word, he pulls on his bike helmet. Then, he steps away. “Well. I have to get back to Homer while this weather holds. Excuse me,” he says through the closed, dark visor. There’s a coughing rumble of a cold engine, that settles into a tinny buzz. A heavy leather boot kicks the stand away.  
  
“Holden,” Bill begins, apologetically. But the bike, and its rider, are already hurtling out of the motel parking lot.

  
  
In his own motel room, Bill finds Detective Curley’s card. Their conversation is brief, logistical. Meeting at the site of a possible sighting of their Eklutna Doe. A strange place to discuss an unrelated investigation; Bill suspects a tacit agreement therein to pretend that this second case is not a distraction from the much more pressing murder investigation. Which, it is. Of course it is. Not that the Eklutna case has any current momentum to be lost by a detour through a cold case. A distraction nonetheless.  
  
The rendezvous will come after he and Barney are done visiting the pathologist working the Eklutna case. Bill is glad to have back-up in Jim Barney, but moreover to ensure the local cops have no excuse to edge his partner out of the case.  
  
Bill takes off his tie, tosses it over the back of the cushiony, coffee-brown armchair taking up far too much of his crowded motel room. At least the room is well insulated (except for a draft under the door), and the thermostat seems to be responsive to the occupant instead of under the stingy control of the motel management. He puts the file of Holden’s notes on his dresser, beside the official investigative notes he should be going over. Despite Holden’s barbs about how uninformed he is on the Homer case, something is keeping him from opening the file. He instead sinks all of an inch into the rigid mattress, a rumbling groan rising unbidden from the depth of his lungs.  
  
He should get up to speed on the Homer case; he should re-read the Eklutna case before his path lab visit; he should call Nancy and check in on Brian; he should call Holden and apologise (not that he could reach the young man in his voluntary hermitage).  
  
The highest priority task also turns out to be the most pointless. He calls his own home, and his wife does not pick up. Unusual for Nancy to be out on a weeknight, but Bill is also aware that he’s probably forgetting a significant date or event. He’ll find out when it gets brought up in an argument upon his return to Virginia.  
  
He walks right past the case files on his way out to dinner. Usually, when eating alone out on a consultation, those would be coming with him. Never enough hours in the day for all of the research he wants to do, so carefully avoiding coffee or whiskey or gravy stains on official FBI case files is Bill’s norm. He’s not sure where this reluctant, recalcitrant mood is coming from, but he doesn’t have enough energy to bully himself into his usual work ethic.

  
  
Bill still doesn’t know Anchorage very well; his search through the rapidly darkening streets is meandering and does not avail a convenient diner to pull into. His motel really is in an awful neighborhood. He ends up heading towards the city center, stuck in cautious traffic at a wide intersections.  
  
It’s there that he hears a familiar, engine-metal buzz.  
  
The motorcyclist turns, several blocks ahead of Bill’s car. Bill finds himself immediately, irrationally intent on the vehicle. There are other motorcycles in Anchorage, of course. The rapidly expanding capital city is home to nearly two hundred thousand people. Besides, Holden told him he was driving all the way back to Homer. Daylight is fading fast, and driving on those remote, icy roads in the cover of night seems reckless even for Holden Ford. Bill tries to make out anything beyond dark motion blur. The light is green. He accelerates through the intersection, finds himself tipping the indicator down and turning down the side street.  
  
He drives slowly, sees the bike turning once more, several cars ahead of him. Another suburban street. Feeling increasingly misdirected, and a little creepy, Bill slowly follows. He can no longer see the motorcycle. The street is poorly lit by sporadic street lights, low and suburban despite the proximity to the CBD. Lots of cheap wire fencing and deteriorating homes. He doesn’t want to slow down to a suspicious degree, so only catches movement in his peripheral vision. Someone disappearing into an apartment building, he thinks.  
  
Bill drives another hundred odd feet, pulls his way through a u-turn that skates over a section of driveway due to the narrowness of the street.  
  
He drives very slow now, pulling to a gentle halt in front of an overgrown garden. With the engine off, the street is unfriendly quiet. He can make out the motorcycle now, tucked almost out of view within the apartment parking lot. The poorly-lit, L-shaped building has a strip of orange paint detailing, rising up from the snow-topped bitumen like a rusted high tide mark. On the street-facing wall: “TENT AVE. MANO”. On closer inspection, pale outlines of long-peeled orange paint reveals the original text. _Tenth Avenue Manor._ Ill-befitting such a decrepit building, but perhaps aspirational. Bill examines what he can of the motorcycle. It looks like Holden’s, but Holden’s looked like any old bike. Dark, compact.  
  
...the large, presumably waterproof lockbox on the back is the same, Bill notes, as he cranes his neck over towards his passenger seat. Finally, he makes out the logo. Also a Honda.  
  
“What the fuck are you doing still in Anchorage, Holden?” he asks out loud. He checks his watch: almost ten. Too late to be doing interviews. Then the reality of the situation dawns on him. Late enough for a certain kind of visit. Holden is young, very handsome, and now glamorous with success. Not hard for a man like him to find company. ...it also explains the lie about returning to Homer.  
  
Bill shrinks, reaching for his car keys still in the ignition. He takes hold of them, and yet doesn’t restart the motor. The keys are jingling with something like rage. There’s an irrational desire to follow Holden inside, beat down every door, pull him out onto the street and… and _what_ ? Berate him for having his own personal life? Ask him to pine after a married man forever? The very idea is absurd. Holden can do what he wants.  
  
Bill finds himself sitting in judgment, nonetheless. _A pity his boyfriend lives in such a crappy neighborhood._ He examines the broken down mailboxes, the plastic six-pack ring hung over a maintenance hatch like a hunting trophy. The snow has been scuffed away from the road, presumably by a city plower, but the sidewalks are white clumps then ugly grey-brown smears of footsteps. No effort has gone into shoveling. A lack of pride in their neighborhood, then. Nobody respectable lives here.  
  
Bill is still scouring the scene for new details to indict this individual Holden is dallying with when the apartment block’s door swings open. Bill presses back into his shadowy seat, keeping his head turned away. A motorcycle engine starts. He glances out of the corner of his eye, barely catches Holden pulling out of his park (too fast, in Bill’s opinion) and taking off back the way he came. Bill’s confusion is immediate. _That couldn’t have been more than five minutes in and out. No time for-- so, then, what was the late night house call? His lover wasn’t home? ...no, too long for that._ Bill is slow in restarting the car, but finds himself driving in the same direction. He can’t make the light of Holden’s motorbike out. He swears under his breath as he inches down the accelerator, squinting ahead for the motorcycle’s rear red light.  
  
He doesn’t see the parked bike until too late. It waits in shadows, equidistant between streetlights on a bare stretch of road. And beside it, the driver, staring his way with arms sternly folded.  
  
Bill swears again, and coasts his speeding car towards the snow-packed curb ahead of the motorcycle.  
  
In his rear view mirror, the motorcycle driver closes in. As if this is any old traffic stop. Bill cranks his window down, as what is almost certainly Holden arrives alongside his hire car. The helmet comes off, Holden Ford’s ever-unreadable expression beneath.  
  
“Are you following me?” the young man asks, point blank.  
  
“I thought you were supposed to be heading back to Homer,” Bill says, trying to sound suspicious rather than caught out.  
  
“I was,” Holden replies, deliberately even. Bill can see his jaw working as if he's grinding his teeth. The young man smooths his barely mussed hair. “I decided it was going to be too risky a journey. Since I was staying in town, I’m taking the opportunity to attend to some errands.”  
  
“Errands that involve house calls?”  
  
Holden twitches with withheld annoyance. “Research,” he says, curtly.  
  
“Yeah? Research into what, exactly? Find out anything interesting?” Bill says, to frigid silence. “...why, Holden, I can normally never stop you from talking about your cases.”  
  
Holden leans in towards the window. His voice has the quality of kiln-hot ceramic: smooth, scalding, untouchable. “How about, Special Agent Tench, you use all of your sway as head of the BSU to formally involve the FBI. Get the exhumation moving along. And then I’ll let you in on everything that I’ve unearthed.” Bill can’t see his stare now that he’s in the car’s shadow. Only those shiny white teeth, this time all ordered into a cocky facade.  
  
“Listen, Ford--” Bill begins heatedly, but stops himself short. He leans back from the window, fiddling with a cigarette lighter. A cigarette, tapped out from his packet. The pleasant association of the two.  
  
Holden shows for a moment, in that warm, wavering light. He is steady and unflinching as a veteran sniper.  
  
Bill speaks before he’ll smoke, making his tone as kind as he can. “Listen, Holden. If you’re in trouble, I need you to tell me right now. I’m your friend. I will help you. But tell me now before it gets worse, okay?”  
  
Holden’s unfeeling grin drops. When he replies, there’s no bite to it: “Bill, you don’t have to worry right now. I really am okay.”  
  
“...are you lying to me right now?”  
  
“You can tell when I’m lying,” Holden says, sounding unhappy with the situation.  
  
“If I could tell when you were lying, none of-- you would have been out of prison much faster, wouldn’t you? If you’re lying, tell me. Before I have to deal with another Greenwich.”  
  
“This is nothing like Greenwich,” Holden attempts to reassure, or perhaps dismiss. “...I was in a very bad place.”  
  
“You know, I’ve heard that from you before. Your life seems to be a series of bad places. And Alaska might be another one, for all I know. ...I don’t even understand why you’re on this case at all, Holden. Why is this so personal for you?”  
  
Holden releases a breathy sigh, that seems to unfix ratcheted tensions within. Posture folds inward, and he now seems to be supporting his weight on the roof of the car. So close, he is entirely engulfed in darkness. “I-- I agree with the woman who asked me to look into this case. The one who is leasing me my cabin. I don’t think he drowned,” he murmurs.  
  
“But why--”  
  
“I understood the question the first time,” Holden gently intervenes. “...this case is personal because it’s personal for nobody, Bill. You once said you couldn’t believe that a non-zero number of people cared about me--”  
  
“I--” Bill begins to interject, regretfully.  
  
“Or something to that effect,” Holden adds quickly. “And you were right. I drive people away from me. I hurt people.”  
  
“I was being an asshole, Holden,” Bill tells him gruffly.  
  
Holden doesn’t respond to that. He looks backwards down the street, apparently no longer able to speak in Bill’s direction. “If Em had given up on me, or if Kathy had given up on me, or if you’d given up on me-- look. I’m lucky to have you. My John Doe wasn’t that lucky.”  
  
“You are anything but lucky.”  
  
Holden doesn’t seem to hear that. “After Greenwich, Kathy, and Em, I mean, they were angry but-- and you, you stood up for me to the local police--”  
  
Bill cuts him off there. “Holden. Jesus Christ. That was all very mundane levels of interpersonal support. Your frame of reference for how people treat you cannot be your mother.”  
  
Holden withdraws, pulling his sagging form upright. “That’s not my frame of reference,” he replies, in a way that Bill thinks sounds like a lie.  
  
“...I shouldn’t have snapped.”  
  
“It’s fine.”  
  
“No, it’s…” Bill trails off. “Holden, what were you doing? Tonight? Why did you lie about going back to Homer?”  
  
“It really is research. I’ll explain it, Bill. Just not right now. I’m too tired to explain it right now,” Holden murmurs, resting his forehead on his own hands against the car roof.  
  
Bill squints up, trying to read a familiar shadow. “...okay, fine,” he relents. He finally has a drag of tobacco. A relief from the stinging cold issuing into the car interior. “This is an extension of trust. You better be deserving.”  
  
Holden’s leather-gloved fingers fumbles off the car roof, and then into the car, onto Bill’s shoulder. He leaves his hand there, cold but warming. “I-- thanks.” Then it retreats back to his own side. “I’m sorry that your son heard about the Madison case, Bill. Kids shouldn’t have to-- you know. Worry about that sort of thing.”  
  
“I’m… sorry I was… abrasive,” Bill says haltingly. Not the apology he hoped he’d produce. He shifts in his seat, trying to dislodge the clinging afterlife of Holden’s touch. He can’t bring himself to talk candidly about Brian, not with Holden. Maybe not with anyone. “Where can we talk, tomorrow?”  
  
“I’ve got a room at the Staybridge Suites. Room, uh--” Holden checks a motel key fob, “--45. Call in the morning.”

Bill nods. He blows cigarette smoke away from Holden, into his unoccupied passenger seat. “Tomorrow morning I’m meeting up with Detective Curley and Ji--Special Agent Barney. To discuss the Homer Doe. Maybe you should be there.”  
  
“That’s your call, Bill. You’re the one who didn’t want to be involved in my case,” Holden points out, deftly.  
  
“...we’ll talk in the morning,” Bill also procrastinates.  
  
He can feel Holden’s acute examination, even if it’s hard to visually discern anything except the glinting, double reflection of his own cigarette ember in pale eyes, a suggestion of cheekbone. The younger man makes a tiny, thoughtful hum. “Thank you,” he says, in a decidedly neutral tone. He steps away from the car, but lingers. Boyish features are again caught up in the streetlight, merciless contrast attempting to unveil the guarded expression. Then, as if done waiting, Holden walks away.  
  
Bill waves a noncommittal farewell. He’s not sure he wants Holden in that meeting, and he’s not sure why he made the offer. Leverage? An attempt to comfort Holden? … a subconscious self-sabotage that will see his own reputation irreparably damaged? Bill rolls his window mostly closed, taps ash through the tiny remaining gap, then shuts out the cold entirely. He sees Holden’s resolutely set back in his side mirror, marching towards his parked motorcycle.  
  
Bill restarts his car and pulls away.

  
  
He eats in confounded, miserable silence. Follows a roast beef dinner with two bourbons, an unsatisfactory sting of liquor that does little to distract from the mounting throb of a headache. He figured that a return to Alaska would set him on a course parallel to Holden Ford’s, but even in moments of deep dread he had not envisioned such a catastrophic, headlong collision.  
  
The diner-cum-sports-bar he’s eating in is showing a NHL re-run, and there’s a basketball game he can’t quite make out on another screen across the bar. Overhanging his counter meal is a huge, black-and-white photograph of a parka-clad, grinning man beside several panting huskies; when curiosity eventually drives Bill to ask after his identity, he is established to be the first Iditarod winner. Bill’s heard that a lot of dogs die in sled races. He doesn’t say that to the bartender.  
  
He finishes a third bourbon while mindlessly regarding the portrait, then slopes out into the bleak night. The hire car’s paltry heater doesn’t get close to making the trip back to his motel bearable. He plugs the gap underneath his drafty front door with his unused pillow, settles into a somewhat-medicated sleep.

  
  
He wakes to an alarm and to the prompt resumption of his headache.  
  
He doesn’t feel like he can call Holden until he’s showered, then hurriedly dressed in his suit and an overcoat over that. A state of undress wouldn't do. Keep it professional, even over the phone. Leaving shower-damp marks on the phonebook, he finds the Staybridge Suites, then dials out.  
  
The receptionist greets him in a tone too friendly for so early in the undawned morning. Bill scarcely hears the words except to know he somehow managed the number correctly first try.  
  
“Can you connect me to Mr. Holden Ford in room 45?” he asks, stifling a yawn.  
  
There’s a dull muddle of movement through the line. The seconds tick by. Then, “I’m sorry, sir. The guest staying in room 45 has already checked out.”  
  
Bill grows very still. He can feel a droplet of water leaving his hair, trickling past his jawline and towards the unbuttoned collar of his shirt. He catches the water on the back of his hand as if swatting a pestering insect. His headache impinges any attempt to square away the information he’s being provided. “Holden’s already gone? Are you-- ...is there a message or something?”  
  
More rustling. “Sorry. No. According to our log, he checked out last night. Eleven fifteen,” she’s saying apologetically. “The room is currently unoccupied.”


	4. Chapter 4

Bill and Jim meet Detective Curley in a dim, rearranged storage room above the unembellished interior of a workman’s coffee shop. The owner (a dark-haired woman with bad teeth) seems unbothered by the besuited men sidling past the counter and up the staircase. Perhaps grateful for the free security; according to Jim, two graffiti attempts have already been interrupted in the back alley behind the store.  
  
A fold-out trestle supplies desk space. Atop that, a camera with a long-range lens, a handwritten list of license plates, a wired in phone, a police scanner and radio. All this, for an unconfirmed sighting of a woman who could perhaps be the Eklutna Doe. The stink of desperation almost overpowers the coffee fumes seeping upstairs.

The surveilled street is the milieu that Bill is unhappily familiar with. The demographic of victimhood. Despite the horrors of suburban disappearances, random killings inside family homes, the statistics tell of a scarcely deviating norm. Victims are poor, non-white, female. A class of people that the righteous society of America does not particularly care to protect. Here they are: an older, probably latino woman with a time-lined face and large sunglasses carrying a grocery bag towards a muddied bus stop; a wisp of cigarette, an equally insubstantial young woman frowning out a second-storey window in spite of the turned weather; underneath a dinted red Space Age facade of a distant movie theatre, someone small and not particularly remarkable is scraping away ephemeral dirty snow from a set of warming concrete steps.  
  
Two cigarettes, a cloying, jam-sticky fruit tart, and an extremely good coffee fetched from downstairs cover most of the mise en scène. Body dredged out of the water, early spring, 1974. A young man. Dark brown hair, almost black. Dark brown eyes. At least largely Causasian-- harder to be exact, with the degree of decay. Spotted by a pair of local fisherman, bobbing about a mile offshore from Homer.  
  
Bill read the file with breakfast; as much an attempt to understand Holden as understand the deceased stranger. Now, he finds himself struggling to hear the familiar details. Instead, he’s measuring the length Holden went to avoid a tough conversation. Then, there’s the ensuing speculation at what the tough conversation may have entailed.  
  
The irregularities that Holden had compiled in the latter half of the file were a fairly compelling conclusion to his scrambled eggs and black coffee. The first, Bill had heard already from Barney: a drowned man without water in his lungs. The second, half-inferred from an irritable Holden Ford: a patch of seemingly symmetrical skin slippage on the heavily decayed chest, that the case file posits as a removed tattoo. The autopsy photographs aren’t particularly high quality, but even through the photocopy grain Bill can see the oddly squared-off shape. The third consideration Bill considers the weakest: the lack of a positive identification, lack of even one substantial sighting within the town of Homer. Holden’s notes seem to suggest that body was therefore transported a significant distance to be dumped; Bill sees no reason for such an involved explanation. He’s gotten to know John and Jane Does aplenty. Many fresh enough allow a vivid description (some in condition good enough to allow an as-life photograph). People with personalised jewelry, distinctive clothing, people with surgical scars and dental work and tattoos. The overwhelming evidence doesn’t matter, if nobody is searching.  
  
From the shaded window overlooking the ugliest urban neighborhood that Anchorage has to offer, Bill sees many prospective additions to the Doe family tree.  
  
Detective Tom Curley is not doing much surveillance for the moment. He’s animated above a splayed autopsy report flecked with icing sugar from the baked goods. “He was well fed. Slim, but a decent muscle mass,” he’s explaining unnecessarily. “Clothing wasn’t designer, but not cheap either. Department store stuff. Good condition. Would have gone into the water around October, but he wasn’t wearing gloves, snowshoes. No jacket, but it’s assumed that came off in the water. No wallet or keys, though they could have easily been knocked free, or just been in his jacket pockets. He was cleanshaven, and had a recent haircut. In other words, not a homeless drifter, which was what the police all but stated him to be. He had somewhere warm to live. He could afford to look nice.”  
  
“You’re thinking a recent arrival, then?” Bill indulges. _How else do you get no positive ID, murdered or not?_  
  
Barney hums assent. His chair has been dragged into the only patch of sunlight within the room. He’s settled in the dust-bright, skylight beam like a contented housecat. “It’s like he doesn’t exist before he’s dredged out of the Cook Inlet. So, recent arrival. But no family or wife travelling up to look for him. He has money, but there’s no employer or fellow employees worrying about his absence.” Jim Barney is momentarily intent upon a man collecting mail, but his gaze travels back to Bill. “At least, nobody who is willing to contact the police.”  
  
“So, someone who tried to escape their past. Or mixed up in the kind of business that doesn’t open dialogue with police. ...has he got an opinion? Ford?” Bill asks Detective Curley. “It’s not in the file.”  
  
“Nothing concrete. Maybe prostitution.”  
  
Bill blinks with surprise. Of course, he knows that it happens. Male sex workers. Hardly a first instinct in the death of a young man. Not without an evidentiary trail leading him in that direction.  
  
Barney seems to have a similar doubt, from the conspicuously met eyes. “He’s young. Autopsy puts him at nineteen to twenty nine, but most likely mid twenties. He was in very good shape. And, I suppose most importantly, it gives a very solid answer as to why nobody identified him to the police. But it’s just…” he shrugs. He seems to be saying ‘a guess’.  
  
“And the underwear,” Tom Curley contributes. He seems a lot closer to convinced. “Hanro. Much more expensive than the clothing he was wearing.”  
  
Bill wonders what significance underwear pricing has in all this. He rubs at the prickle of shaved hair down his nape and reaches to wipe a hint of sugar away from the autopsy. He nudges that aside, and removes the wide, black and white sketch. The forensic recreation stares up at him innocently. “He looks pretty cleancut,” Bill murmurs. “I mean, a couple of tattoos, but small. Hidden under work clothes. The outfit, the haircut, it all seems... I don’t know. I don’t know. Like a college kid or something.”  
  
“Nobody suspected anything like that, so it’s at the very least an untrod avenue of investigation. Pity it doesn’t come ‘til six years after the fact,” Barney says.  
  
“We thought he’d be identified in a matter of weeks. A tourist or something. Didn’t make sense to pour research into-- well, into any of this,” Detective Curley says with badly concealed defensiveness. “I wasn’t lead on the case back then, either.”  
  
“Right. It sure is a weird case. And this theory, well, I don’t know how much good it’ll do anyone now,” Jim Barney says, closing his eyes against the sun. “I’ve told Holden this. Six years changes things. You’re not going to get an ID through a john. You’re only going to get an ID through family or old friends. People who don’t love him will have forgotten him.”

Bill goes directly from the coffee shop foxhole to Anchorage International Airport. The flight is far longer than he’s accustomed to. Not just jetting around the lower 48. He rereads both his cases and then spends the rest of the flight glowering in the direction of a loudly flirting couple a couple of rows ahead of him.

Brian’s light is off when he arrives home, but the kitchen’s friendly warmth sheds through the mottled stained glass above his front door. He didn’t reach Nancy when he’d called the night before, and some tiny irrational fraction of him is calmed by the sight of her at the kitchen bench.  
  
She speaks before he can greet her-- low, acute. “Em called. Holden’s friend, from New York.”  
  
Bill drops hold of his suitcase, winces at the thud. “Is she okay?”  
  
“She seemed to be. She wanted a message passed to you,” Nancy states.  
  
“--I called here to give you my number and you didn’t pick up--” Bill begins.  
  
Nancy continues, almost cold. “That, in turn, would be passed to Holden.”  
  
“Oh.” He didn’t tell her about Holden. There’s a shock of shame so intense he has to remind himself that Nancy won’t even register the betrayal for what it is.  
  
“So Holden’s in Alaska? Is he writing another book about you?” his wife asks. Despite her relative naivety, she seems displeased. Her curved brows are furrowed with calculation; she is a completely unfamiliar individual before him. A coworker, establishing narrative in an unsavoury interview.  
  
“No. ...not as far as I know,” he ends up qualifying.  
  
“Brian needs a father, not-- not the main character of a detective novel,” she says. “Can you avoid seeing him?”  
  
Bill realises his mouth is agape. He pulls his jaw together, schools his own features into a vaguely confused frown. “I thought you liked Holden?” There’s roiling revulsion at his own dishonesty. _She didn’t ask about that. She’s never asked about that,_ he tells himself, like a politician trying to buy into their own spin.  
  
Nancy doesn’t soften at all. “Brian needs a father,” she repeats, which seems very loaded. His hand goes to touch her shoulder as she passes, and she steps aside to avoid it.  
  
“Wait, Nancy. What was the message? For Holden?”  
  
“It’s written down in your office,” she says without turning. He hears the bedroom door close.  
  
Bill goes straight to his office, briefcase slipping off a shoulder as he sits at his desk. The protectiveness over Em hasn’t eased up even for a year out of contact. There’s a note centered on the otherwise empty desk, in what is unmistakably his wife’s forward slanted cursive. ‘Em Therese for Holden Ford: Mrs. Mechlin called police. Jethro at station.’ A number, below, which Bill already has.  
  
The message is incomprehensible, within the limited period of consideration Bill grants it. He’s already dialling out.  
  
“Em?” he asks, as soon as he hears someone pick up.  
  
“Hey, Bill-- oh, the message. Shit. It’s all sorted now. I should have followed up,” Em says, as close to apologetic as he ever hears her. Aside from when she’d seen him beaten to concussion in a Wisconsin forest, Bill recalls through reddish fog.  
  
Several knots of muscle cease formation across his aching back. He inhales, exhales. _She’s fine._ “...did you get in contact with Holden?”  
  
“No.” She seems to decide that one word isn’t enough explanation. “He asked me to go to his apartment and talk down a nosy neighbour. I went over. Subway wasn’t fast enough. By the time I showed, she’d already called the police.”  
  
“Ah. Mrs. Mechlin, I suppose.”  
  
“Right. Somehow I’m the most benign, approachable person for the job,” Em says, thick with irony. “I’ve met her before, when I was with Holden. I was supposed to go over and talk her down.”  
  
“Oh. I see. His ...friend hadn’t been introduced,” Bill says, stilted.  
  
“Yeah. Jethro. He was pretty whacked out on pain meds after dental surgery, so I guess he looked like a drug addict breaking and entering? Especially to an old, kinda racist neighbour. Never mind that he had a key and everything. He opened the door to talk to the police and they grabbed him.”  
  
Bill finally realises where he’s heard the name before. _Jethro. Jethro… Daniels. Holden’s old prison buddy._ That only gives rise to more questions. _How much money do you have to blow on a lawyer, to get a poor black man who killed his own brother out of prison? ...why is Holden housing him? Is he safe to be around?_  
  
“I called Holden and he didn’t answer at the motel. He’d mentioned you were in Alaska. You two can’t seem to avoid each other for very long,” Em says, in a tone that borders on accusatory. “Your wife didn’t know your number. Said she’d tell you if you called. ...doesn’t matter now. I sorted it. Mrs. Mechlin came down to the station, confirmed that I was Holden’s friend, the pigs let Jethro go. Not even a hint of apology.”  
  
“When was this?” he asks very quickly, trying to shake the feeling that he’s getting morally indicted alongside the NYPD.  
  
“Yesterday night. ...why? I told you I sorted it.”  
  
“Did Holden say anything else when you spoke to him?”  
  
“Why?” Em repeats, more insistently. He can detect a (likely merited) distrust even through the shoddy, crackling connection.  
  
Bill falls wordless, weighing further explanation. He last spoke to Em when she’d been in tandem with Kathy, urging that if Bill was going to Alaska he should make the drive out to Homer and check up on Holden. There’s a good chance she’d understand his concerns about the strange, late-night house call in a crappy neighborhood, perhaps even have information to share. On the other hand, Em is, and always has been, in Holden’s corner. She might close right off if she senses Bill’s suspicion. She might read motives into his consternation about Holden’s activities. He realises he’s been quiet too long, clears his throat. “We agreed to talk, last night. I called his motel this morning, like he told me to, and he’d checked out. It was about a case, and… well, he’s reliable, you know? Almost too reliable. Borderline unavoidable.”  
  
“You guys argued, right?” Em asks, with unhappy certainty.  
  
“Not-- not in that conversation. Did he say that when you two spoke--”  
  
“He didn’t say that,” Em defends. “But he wasn’t pleased about having seen you, I could tell. He should have been excited about getting to work with you, or-- or… I don’t know. Sad, maybe. I could understand sad. He wasn’t either of those. He seemed pissed off that you were in Alaska at all.”  
  
Bill hums an unbending note, trying to maintain outward ambivalence about the assertions. Em is probably exactly on the money. “This would have been early evening?” he suggests.  
  
“It was… nine? Maybe a little earlier. For me, I mean. I thought I could maybe make it back to a gig, though that plan fell to the wayside when I realised I was doing a jail cell breakout. And doors for that opened at ten. The gig. Not the breakout.”  
  
“ _Ten PM?_ ” Bill asks incredulously, forgetting for a moment he’s talking to a twenty-something New Yorker. “Right. Okay. He was calling from Anchorage so… five hours earlier for him? Four o’clock, yeah, that sounds right. We’d argued. ...it was my fault. I thought he was getting too involved in an official investigation.”  
  
“Why is that a problem? He figured out how many of those Chicago murders that my father and Bradshaw committed--” Bill is momentarily thrown at Em still referring to Gregory Creighton as her father. She doesn’t stumble in the slightest. “--not even to mention all the jobs he’s wrapped up since. He should be involved, if you wanted the fucking case solved.”  
  
“Would you mind--” he says, then stops himself from policing the coarse language. “He’s not police, Em. Putting together information is one thing. He’s inserting himself in what could well be a murder investigation. Do you know the disaster he’d be in front of a jury? If I hadn’t been backing him up in Madison, against your-- against Creighton, it would have been a disaster. A good defense lawyer would tear a witness like Holden apart.”  
  
“Holden could handle some scumbag lawyer.”  
  
“No. He couldn’t. He is, by clinical definition, unreliable testimony. If he said otherwise, he’d be perjuring himself.”  
  
“That’s bullshit, Bill. His head is just as together as any of the cops you--”  
  
“Except that he’s told me he hallucinates in times of stress. Because he’s trying to get away with the lowest dosage of medication possible. Which, look, I get it. Antipsychotics aren’t my idea of a good time. But-- but I know how it’d look in front of a jury. We’d never put someone on the stand like--” he stops himself. “The fact is, Em, any case that relied on Holden’s word alone wouldn’t be much of a case at all. And then there’s the potential for lawsuits. Obstruction of justice charges. It could get ugly.”  
  
“Right. Holden is the first private investigator to ever try to solve a crime. And also the first crime journalist,” Em says, sardonically. “Truly, a pioneer.”  
  
“He didn’t want to take my call because he’s hiding things from me,” Bill tells her shortly, and then: “You know what he did in Greenwich. Look-- look--” he talks over her, “--yes, I know I’m a screwup too. But what Holden did put himself in life-threatening danger. ...I’m doing my best to protect him. If that includes the unfortunate caveat ‘from himself’, so be it.”  
  
“Is that what you’re doing? Because a lot of what you were talking about was the fidelity of a criminal case, Bill. Not Holden’s personal safety.”  
  
“I’m talking about the criminal case because that criminal case matters to Holden. Damned if I’d ever heard a murmur of this case before Holden began chorusing it from the rooftops. If he’s the reason this case gets blown, he’ll tear himself to shreds.” He pats his pocket for cigarettes and comes up short. In his coat, maybe. “Look, Holden’s smart. But I’ve been in this job for--for as long as you’ve been alive, Em. I know how the system works. Holden doesn’t.”  
  
“...I don’t know what he’s hiding from you,” Em sighs. “Look, he doesn’t talk to me all that much about cases. While he’s been in Alaska, we haven’t been talking much at all. He calls reliably now, but only once a week usually-- unless there’s something going on like the situation with Jethro. Hence the extremely roundabout attempt to contact you.”  
  
“Well, when you get your once a week call, you tell him to call me. And if you hear him talking about anything stupid, anything risky, make sure it reaches me.”  
  
Em doesn’t say a thing.  
  
“I drove out to Homer to check up on him, because _you_ said you were worried. Now I’m calling in the favour. I did my surveillance, you do yours.”  
  
“Oh, _come on_.”  
  
“Okay, okay. I’m overstating things when I say ‘surveillance’,” Bill admits hurriedly. “But I can’t let anything happen to him on my watch. And Alaska feels like my watch.”  
  
He thinks he’s getting nothing but terse silence, but then Em grunts acknowledgment. “If I think he’s endangering himself in some way, _and_ I think you’d be able to rectify the situation in a way that I can’t, I will tell you.”  
  
Bill suspects it’s the most he’ll get out of Em, after his monumental fuck-up in Greenwich. “Thank you. ...tell him to call me, okay?”  
  
The phone line clicks to a repetitive, unresponsive beep. Bill leans the phone against his forehead, then realises he can hear something else through the connection. A distant television.  
  
“Nancy?” he murmurs. There’s no reply. The kitchen phone must be off the hook. He settles the receiver down and leans on his own arms in untold exhaustion.  
  
Even though her attitude was jarring, Nancy is right. The last thing he needs is another one of Holden’s books, prying into his life. He’s supposed to protect his wife and his child, not expose them to every voyeuristic true crime fanatic who paws through the cases he has to work. 

  
If Em does tell Holden to call, he must ignore her counsel. Bill gets no call from Holden, no message, not even a businesslike fax of case updates.  
  
Worry about Holden has Bill preoccupied, and as if in reciprocation, the world withdraws from him. There are no developments on the Eklutna case. Other cases likewise stall. With agents on site in three different concurrent investigations, the burgeoning BSU is suddenly a ghost town.  
  
Distance invades his own home, too. A yawning divide that he’s on the lonesome side of.  
  
As ugly as it is to allow himself to even think, Bill is used to Brian feeling like a stranger. But now even Nancy seems to be beyond him; it’s as if her passing touch comes through latex gloves, as if she speaks sterile through a paper face mask. As if she’s performing some macabre duty. When she looks at him across their dining table, he feels as if he’s bloodless and gutless and on a chrome-toned slab.

  
  
He distantly recalls a similarly lifeless home life during the Madison case. The Holden Ford case, he’d thought of it then.  
  
He supposes this second onset is also the result of the never-ending Holden Ford case.

  
  
Bill finds reality only when he’s immersed in the unofficial case files he hasn’t had the stomach to take to Quantico. For all of his engrossment, the identity of the Homer Doe seems utterly inscrutable. As does Holden’s frantic late night check-out, and ensuing radio silence.  
  
He sees Homer Doe’s face askance as he’s turning his study light out, determined to spend at least some portion of the night in Nancy’s frigid company. For a moment, the stranger morphs into Holden Ford’s decade old mugshot.  
  
He lingers in the haunted darkness. _Who did I call, when Madison didn’t make sense?_  
  
He turns the light back on with a sense of dread. No Holden. The Homer Doe regards him with understated urgency in those eerie dark eyes.  
  
Bill swears softly, almost apologetically. He sits again, dials out to a number he knows very well. He stops before the last digit, sets the receiver down. Checks his watch. Then, hurrying at the behest of a dead stranger, he flicks through his address book to find a home number.  
  
“Doctor Wendy Carr speaking,” Wendy answers. As professionally as if she were still at an office.  
  
“Can you profile a victim?” he asks with no preamble.  
  
Wendy doesn’t stoop to niceties either. She bullrushes the question. “On a behavioural basis? That seems ethically questionable.”  
  
“Oh. No. Not behaviourally. Can you look at-- at clothing? The style of their hair? Tattoos?”  
  
“You’re trying to identify someone,” Wendy says slowly. Reluctantly interested, he thinks. He hopes.  
  
“Yeah. Sorry to call you so late.”  
  
Wendy chuckles. “No, no. It’s strategically a very sensible method of engaging me. You only have to surmount the competing appeal of the evening news right now. ...go on.”  
  
Bill allows himself a real smile. Briefly. “Evidence has all been pored over in excruciating detail, so there’s no one-and-done on an ID. Nothing all that remarkable in isolation. But I think you could compile this into something useful. Something complete. Inferences about personality, hints at lifestyle, those could really help guide an investigation.”  
  
“Bill, this doesn’t sound like my area,” Wendy hedges. “I’m a psychologist. This seems like run-of-the-mill forensics.”  
  
“This _would_ be behavioural psychology. People dress a particular way, tattoo themselves with particular designs, for psychological reasons. We’ve been guessing at job, socio-economic bracket, but it’s all ...assumptive. Nothing scientific.”  
  
“If you wanted to scientifically determine the psychological underpinnings of, say, a certain tattoo, you would need to find a lot of people with similar tattoos and do demographic analysis, alongside other quantitative data gathering. Additionally, you’d want qualitative data. Study stated motivations for getting that particular tattoo. That would be science, that would be data. If you’re asking for my opinions on a tattoo without handing me a grant to conduct such a study, I will be guessing too.”  
  
Bill hums discontentedly. She’s correct, of course. “Well, sure, but you’re smarter than any of the other people on this case. Least of all me. So it’s not a case of your guess is as good as mine. Your guess would be much better than mine.”  
  
He can hear her smile when she replies. “I’m certain that’s not true. Whereas concerns the identification of the deceased, you are the professional.”  
  
“This professional has failed. ...and he’s getting desperate.”  
  
“Just what every woman wants to hear about a late-night call coming her way. ...what case would I, hypothetically, be guessing about?”  
  
“A John Doe in Homer, Alaska. Possible homicide, possible suicide, possible accidental drowning. A real doozy.”  
  
“Alaska? ...but not connected to the Eklutna case?”  
  
“Six years back, so most likely not. I mean, we don’t know a fucki-- a single thing about this guy, or our girl in Eklutna. But most likely not. It’s a passion project of one Holden Ford,” he admits. “Trying to get a lost soul justice or something.”  
  
“...so this man is a heroin user?” Wendy asks.  
  
“What--?”  
  
“Holden called me a month-- no, maybe more than that, actually-- several weeks ago--”  
  
“To ask about heroin? To ask _you_ about heroin?” Bill interrupts, baffled. He hadn’t realised Holden was overlapping cases. “Is that something you’re studying?”  
  
“Holden was asking me about the psychological profile of heroin users. I told him he would be better off talking to a medical doctor, or to someone who specialized in the psychology of addiction. I suggested Doctor Lizbon would be a good place to start. Prison populations have a high percentage of drug users, after all.”  
  
She says something more, but Bill is no longer listening. How much more obvious could it be? A five minute house call in a bad neighborhood. If this was any suspect he were tailing, Bill would have figured it out in a second. It’s Holden that makes him stupid. His perennial blind spot.  
  
“Bill?” he hears for a second time, and realizes that Wendy is still on the line.  
  
“My mistake. Same case.”


	5. Chapter 5

The blue-grey military surplus-style parka, that seemed like such a sensible purchase after watching Jim Barney tucked cosily within thick nylon and fur, seems determined to prevent Bill from closing his own suitcase. He tosses out another borderline-essential (dress shoes, in case he needs to front up to a lawyer or high ranking police) onto the bed beside his second tie and tries again to finagle the zipper closed. Not even close. He’s hunched over, one knee on the lid, telling the fucking thing to close beneath his breath, when he catches movement in his peripheral vision. He looks up with a sheepish expression towards the doorway.  
  
Nancy seems far too severe to be reacting to the breathy cussing. She’s crosslit by early morning blue; ashen and lifeless and still. Arms folded, back ruler-rigid, nails at the skin of her own forearms. The normally smile-creased eyes are dark and darting. Up early too. He thinks he heard her cooking, so maybe preparing for a lunch. Her cardigan has been rolled up, as if she’s been washing dishes. Underneath, the shift dress is navy, businesslike.  
  
“Alaska?” she asks.  
  
Bill grimaces. He had intended to mention the trip before he started packing-- but by the time he was out of the shower, she’d seemed busy. She was already asleep when he was booking flights. “Yeah. Sorry. Something--”  
  
“Came up,” she finishes, coldly.  
  
Bill raises an eyebrow at the tone. “...did we have plans that I’m--”  
  
“Holden is still up there, I suppose.” A quiver passes over her pale lips, a momentary lapse before they are soldered industrial-straight once more.  
  
“...yes, Holden is in Alaska,” Bill agrees, cautiously. There’s a prickle of anticipation beginning up his nape. Smothered terror unlike anything he can recall. His voice sounds thin and unconvincing to his own ears. “Is there some bad blood between Ford and you that I should know about? Because I understand his book has been an annoyance--”  
  
“I’m not the one who has an undisclosed past with Holden Ford,” Nancy retorts tersely.  
  
Bill says nothing, does nothing. Any reaction at all would be a confession, or a boldfaced lie.  
  
She glances over her shoulder, steps into their bedroom and closes the door at her back. “A few months ago, a man called me up,” Nancy begins in stilted, struggling syllables. “My number is on the houses I’m showing. The real estate company gives it out sometimes. He wasn’t calling about the houses. It was obvious right away. He knew who I was, and who I was married to. ...he said that you were-- that you were having an affair with Holden. Except he didn’t use that language.” She swallows, seems to compose herself before she resumes. “All kinds of people have read that book. People at church, people who I’d never think could stand something so horrible. Sometimes, I’ll be showing someone a house, and they suddenly start asking--” she’s losing composure, rapidly. “I thought he was disturbed. The man on the phone. I… wanted to think that. No, I needed to. All the love I’ve shown you over the years, all the trust, all the-- all the forgiveness, for when you’re distant for months at a time, for when you’re not home to be my husband, for when you’re failing to be a father to your own son-- what’s it all for? If I believed him, I’ve wasted all of the love I’ve given to you.” Her eyes are dry, but there’s shaking between her shoulders and running down her sternum as if she’s already sobbing.  
  
“Nancy--”  
  
“I hung up on him. And he never called again. He didn't give me his name, so I couldn't ask find him and ask more questions. Even if I changed my mind.” As if deep in icy water, she cannot inhale. A palm is on her chest now. She draws down enough to continue on. “I knew, when I read Holden’s book, he loved you. I thought-- he had no father-- and you were such a hero to him--”  
  
Bill flinches.  
  
“And then, I find you’re going up to Alaska. Hiding that it’s him you’re going up to see. Why wouldn’t you mention it, otherwise? You’ve been having an affair. With a man. With-- with a _boy_ .”  
  
The first emotion that overwhelms him is relief. This is the worst it could be. The knife is as deep as it could be; it has hit hilt; it is going in no further. Guilt and self-preserving fear follow the fleeting catharsis. This is his family. His life. Being rift into irreparable fragments, as he gapes on like a spectator to his own destruction. Bill summons the courage to open his mouth, but Nancy interjects over him.  
  
“Don’t lie to me.” Almost a plea.  
  
“...of course I’m not going to lie to you,” Bill says hollowly. “I-- he and I-- once. I had been drinking. He had been drinking. It was a mistake, Nance. The worst mistake I’ve ever made.”  
  
A look of unadulterated horror flashes across his wife’s features. She cowers from him as if he’s a misshapen monstrosity emerging from the emptied body of her husband. Just as quickly, it’s replaced with chilling, scrutinizing doubt. He can see her nails scraping rhythmically against her palms, back and forwards, tendons threshing at the back of her hand.  
  
“This isn’t ongoing,” Bill tries, vocals fracturing into a hoarse mutter. “Nancy, I’m so sorry.”  
  
She nods, though it doesn’t seem to be in acceptance of the apology. Bill’s unhappy suspicions are confirmed by her next words: “No. If you were sorry, you wouldn’t be going to Alaska.”  
  
“I won’t. Look, I won’t,” Bill says, pointedly dropping the tie he’s been restlessly twining around his knuckles like a boxer’s wrap. He overturns his case, but too rushed, too forceful. It falls to the carpet, only a muted thud, but Nancy still recoils.  
  
“You took me to his book launch. You took me to New York to meet him. ...we had dinner. The three of us.”  
  
“I didn’t want--” he starts, reconsiders. “I’m sorry.” His hand extends, almost involuntarily, towards her. She withdraws as if he’s diseased.  
  
“No. We’re not-- we’re not discussing this,” she says. “No. We’re not. You need to leave. You need to get out. Right now. Close your _damn_ suitcase and get out.”  
  
“I can’t. You saw, it’s too full," Bill mutters, meaningless, defensive nonsense. "The parka I--”  
  
“Put the parka on. Go and wait on the curb. I will order your taxi for you,” she spells out. She seems methodical, efficient, except for how tears are now dribbling from the tight corners of her eyes.  
  
Bill pulls the parka out of the spilled pile, tugging it on over his suit in a rush to show deference. Then he actually hears the follow up. “Nancy, I’m not going to leave like this. I need to fix this. Can I apologise properly? Please?”  
  
“I had to hear from-- from some child, that you’re up there with him,” Nancy chokes out. Her eyes are inflamed and sparkling. She scrapes a bare forearm across them, fingers a trembling fist. An oily dark mascara mark drags down over a cheekbone. She smears that back with her palm. “I cannot have you in our-- in my house right now. I do not want to hear your apology. So you leave. _Now._ ” She can’t seem to get the door open fast enough to be out of a room with him. He can hear her telling Brian to play in the backyard. As if Bill will contaminate his own child. Bill isn’t sure that’s not the case. There must be something wrong with him, to have done this to his family.  
  
He zips up the emptier suitcase, ties his shoes with strangely steady hands. He can’t see Nancy in the kitchen, or through the window into the backyard. He can hear Brian talking, muffled, out of sight. Perhaps to himself. He takes one step towards the sound, then halts. _She wants me gone._ Obediently, and perhaps because it’s the easiest option, Bill walks out of his own home.

He stands astride the waking suburban street and smokes three cigarettes to hideous nubs. Now that it has happened, the cataclysm seems as if it were always inevitable. _How did I ever hope to avoid moral retribution for my own sins? This is how criminals think. That consequence doesn’t apply to them. Self-absorbed, heartless--_ He’s jolted by a taxi’s horn directly beside him.  
  
“Hey? Dulles International?” a blur in the driver’s seat asks. “Did you order--”  
  
“No,” Bill says mindlessly, tries to blink focus into his uncooperative eyes. “No. Washington National.” He has no idea why he bothered with the correction. He’s not going to Alaska. He gets into the back seat, suitcase beside him. He could go to the office. ...his car is right beside him, why wouldn’t he just drive? The taxi is already peeling out, the driver makes some jaunty remark about Bill’s parka. Bill sightlessly, wordlessly nods along, already pulling another cigarette out. He gets to the airport drop-off and realises he hasn’t lit it.

Two hours into the flight he decides that the anonymous caller must have been Harry Ellis. He also becomes truly aware that he’s en route to Alaska. Getting out of the taxi, sitting in a lounge, queuing, it all seemed inevitable sequential steps. ...maybe not all autopilot. It seems as if his destroyed marriage should take precedence over trying to save Holden Ford from his own reckless idiocy, but he doesn’t know what to do about his marriage. He doesn’t know if there’s anything _to_ do. Holden, on the other hand, is a problem Bill has an approximate idea of how to solve.  
  
Madison was a couple of hours on a plane, when Bill was rushing off to try to save Holden from his bad decisions. Anchorage is more than ten.  
  
Bill knocks back several bourbons over the dragging haze of the flight. He devolves into disjointed, half-hearted revenge fantasies about destroying Harry Ellis’s entire life with every unethical method available to him as an FBI agent. But Ellis isn’t to blame for this. Not really. Bill knows which man is responsible for destroying his life. He’s not quite psychologically deviant enough to reject his own comeuppance.  
  
For the briefest of moments, as the plane shudders through a cloudy descent, he considers that the caller could have been Holden. He puts that aside as wishful blame-reassignment.

  
  
Anchorage is smothering grey and barely visible to Bill. He’s informed by the chirpy blank-faced man at the car hire desk that the weather is expected to hold until the next day. Bill hires the same truck as Jim Barney. Red. All they had was red.  
  
Patchy, drifting snowfall begins half an hour into the drive out to Homer. Bill takes the first few corners too fast, until he has to catch before himself going into a skid on black ice. He drives safer after that, even though he’s not sure who he’s not dying for exactly. _Nancy would probably--_ _  
_ _  
_ _I can’t think that._ _  
_ _  
_ Instead, he tries to predict Holden Ford’s excuses and rationalizations, pre-empt them. _Treat this like an interrogation. He’s earned that. He lied to you._ And then, _this isn’t his fault. You can’t take it out on him._ _  
_  
The spread of Homer, around the spit of dockyards and marinas, is homey in a way that Bill has no call to be nostalgic for. Usually he allows himself a few seconds of unfounded sentimentality. Today it seems disparate, kitschy, unappealing. A brightly lit, hand-painted sign offers ‘Oysters and Beer’; an aluminum hulled dingy with a ‘FOR SALE’ sign juts improperly onto the main road; two young women are clinging together outside a bar, maybe saying goodbyes.  
  
It’s getting dangerously close to sunset, a fact which ordinarily would have occurred to Bill, and he would have planned around. He has no such plan today. He’ll have to find a room in Homer on the way back, he supposes, or drive all the way back to Anchorage in the increasingly heavy snowfall and the Alaskan dark. Even without this time constraint, Bill has no energy for a protracted conversation with Holden Ford. _Scare him out of whatever idiocy he’s engaging in. Get out of there before Holden can make this personal._  
  
Five odd minutes past the clumped township, Bill spots the cabin perched on the swirling hillside. He’s relieved to see lights twinkling through the small, high windows set into the red A-frame. The sunset is muffled, muted blush over the expanse of still falling rose-tinged snow.  
  
He pulls the parka hood up against the snow and rehearses ruthlessness. Then, he knocks hard on the cabin door.  
  
If Holden is thrown by his arrival, he does an excellent job of marshalling himself. He smiles in a vague and confused manner up at Bill. “It’s a little late, isn’t it?” he asks, in a way that is closer to boringly adult than suggestive. The sight of Holden Ford in the familiar wool dressing gown is an unexpected panacea. The wooziness of indecision and the heart-wrenching pain seems momentarily manageable.  
  
“We need to talk,” Bill says, pressing inside.  
  
Holden gives him space to come inside, then continues retreating all the way up the staircase and into the cabin’s main room. “Right now?” he asks, turned away.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I’m in the middle of something,” Holden says hurriedly. He sidles too quickly behind his desk, settling into a seat in the shadow beyond the desk lamp. A clutter of books and equipment and manilla folders now divide them.  
  
Bill feels a strange, illogical hurt at the dismissal. “I’ll make it quick then. Why did you ask Wendy for a psychological profile of heroin users?”  
  
Holden doesn’t look surprised. If anything, he seems annoyed with himself. A slip up that got caught. He tries to play it off with a vague shrug. “I thought John Doe might be a user.”  
  
Bill doesn’t allow an inch. Not after the bullshit evasion he dealt with. “Why?”  
  
A file is urgently ferreted through. A familiar autopsy photo-- this one with in vivid definition and full colour-- is set directly underneath the desk’s lamp. “Track marks,” Holden murmurs, nearly proud.  
  
Bill tries to squint his way past the mottled texture of grey and purple decay. The man’s forearm is damaged, sure, but all of his body is damaged in one way or another. “You sure it’s not insect--”  
  
“How could I be sure of anything, without the body exhumed? I was in prison for ten years, Bill. Safe to say I’ve seen my fair share of intravenous drug takers. I _know_ what track marks look like. Look at the positioning-- not just in the crux of the elbow over his cubital-- there’s an additional laceration right at the top of his cephalic vein on his forearm here,” Holden says, fingertip almost resting on the glossy colour photograph. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the advances in forensic technology to allow tests for opioid use from hair samples; the FBI is pioneering the use of such technology--”  
  
“I’ve heard about it, yeah,” Bill huffs.  
  
“Well, I thought once we exhumed him, I’d get the hair tested. Have my theory confirmed.”  
  
“And then?”  
  
“Well, whatever I _was_ going to do is purely speculative at this point. I’ve all but confirmed he was a heroin user,” Holden says, sifting the autopsy photos back into order, closing the file.  
  
“...how?” Bill asks, leaning forward, fingers splayed on the tabletop. There’s a heavy camera case, new by the looks of it. As if Holden is doing surveillance. He’s distracted from Holden’s next words.  
  
“I found the Homer connection.”  
  
Bill blinks, determined not to be impressed. “O--kay. What is the Homer connection?”  
  
Holden purses his lips. “...I need to know you want this crime solved, Bill.”  
  
“You’ll have to explain yourself a little better than that.”  
  
“I’ve made… contacts that have proved very fruitful in steering me towards John Doe’s identity. I am certain that I am on the right track. But my avenues of investigation are, by necessity, illicit.”  
  
“Sure. ‘Contacts’,” Bill parrots, utterly unconvinced. “Like, say, a heroin dealer?”  
  
Holden gives a disappointed sigh. He regards Bill as a problem.  
  
“Conspicuously absent from the file, Holden,” Bill says, calm evaporating from his tone. “Nothing about John Doe’s heroin usage. Nothing about your additional investigations.”  
  
“Don’t be obtuse,” Holden says, the same lofty tone.  
  
“So, I witnessed you _scoring heroin_. That’s what you didn’t want to explain to me.”  
  
“For this exact reason,” Holden replies.  
  
“...and it’s not in the file. Jim Barney doesn’t know. The local guys don’t know. You’re just a civilian buying heroin. You do realize that you get arrested with a schedule one drug, you’re looking at prison time. You do realize that, don’t you?”  
  
“I’m in regular contact with local LE,” Holden dismisses. “If this were to come out, I would explain myself, show my research into the men I’m buying from, and how it relates to my John Doe. Christ, Bill, I’m not an idiot.”  
  
“It’s still a fucking crime, Holden. Documentation, no documentation. You’ll be handing over proof of your criminal activity. If any one of them takes issue with your investigative approach, you’ll be dead to rights.”  
  
“Given that I’ve sold my soul for a bestseller, I can afford a good lawyer now,” Holden says under his breath. “I will be able to handle myself.”  
  
“Don’t get fucking glib with me. You have no comprehension of how out of line this is,” Bill growls.  
  
Holden rises from the old log desk chair now. The delicately handsome features contort into a scowl. “My investigative methods are going to get this case solved. Get officially involved, Bill, or don’t get involved at all.” The name comes out like a foreign curse word.  
  
“Don’t get involved? I’m law enforcement. We’re discussing a crime. I should be involved by _definition_.”  
  
“Oh, let’s go there. Again. Get your badge out, go on,” Holden says, sarcastic and unperturbed. “Do you end arguments with Nancy by threatening to arrest her, too?”  
  
_“Don’t,”_ Bill snaps. He shudders himself through a calming breath. _Not right now. Not something I can give mental real estate to right now._  
  
“Have a safe drive back to Anchorage, Agent Tench,” Holden says. He walks away from the conversation to pointedly open the front door.  
  
Bill is right by him. He catches the heavy wood with a flat palm, testing his strength against Holden’s. He wins, and it’s not even close. Holden is jerked forward with the slamming door.

The young man posts himself against it with a clawed hand, turns gradually. Narrowed blue eyes inspect him menacingly; an animal considering going for the jugular.  
  
Bill has seen that expression on plenty of men before. Criminals, mostly. He sets his shoulders and throws every single year of authority he’s earned into his next words: “You need to find legal avenues to research this case. You’re going to stop doing this, Holden. Or I will stop you doing this. I will stonewall your case with LE, I will get a warrant to seize every speck of research you’ve done, then I will arrest all of your ‘contacts’. You think I’m gonna see you back in prison? Or worse? Not as long as I’m FBI.”  
  
Holden tries to open the door again, but Bill is leaning on it with all of his weight. It doesn’t budge. The white-knuckled hand drops. “What does that mean, _'_ ' _or worse'_ ? What could possibly be worse than prison?”  
  
“These are drug dealers, Holden. According to you, they have a connection to a murdered man. If one of them recognises you from television, figures out where they know your name from--”  
  
“I am obviously not using my real name. And I’ve written one autobiography, Bill. I’m hardly a celebrity. It’s not as if Jimmy Hoffa in a ball cap is out on the streets of Anchorage scoring heroin. And if, by some barely plausible coincidence, they did figure out who I am? Why would that be bad? A man with a past like mine has plenty of reasons to use a fake name.”  
  
“Because heroin dealers are notoriously level-headed--” Bill interjects, and is talked over.  
  
Holden inhales through his nose, then paces back up the staircase to glower down on Bill. “Your prescriptive form of ‘concern’ is jeopardizing my research. Research that I truly believe will lead to the identification of this John Doe. Stop putting the personal over the professional. Either have the spine to formally involve the FBI division you head up, or leave me alone so I can solve this case.”  
  
“Professional? Is that what you think you are?”  
  
“Well, I’m currently trying to solve an open case. In that regard, I am certainly the more professional between us,” Holden says from above. “Not to mention that this would make a hell of a book, which is a whole other avenue to professional pay-off. I’m sure I could sell the story, even if Bill Tench doesn’t get to be the hero this time around,” the young man adds acidly.  
  
_You arrogant bastard._ Bill ascends the stairs slowly. Yet, there’s some niggling suspicion that this argumentativeness is too rash, too authentic for Holden Ford. Diversionary. _But then, a diversion from what?_ “What do you do with it? The heroin?”  
  
“I flush it,” Holden spells out, one eyebrow raised. “I’m not going to re-sell it and risk my contact hearing about that through the grapevine.”  
  
_Never mind that selling heroin would be an entirely different, even more serious, federal crime._ He’s level with Holden, now. Able to look down on the shorter man. “...you aren’t using it, then?”  
  
Holden breathes out “Jesus Christ”. A plea for patience, maybe. “No. I am not. I cannot fathom why I have to reassure you about this, but--”  
  
“You’re trying to gain their trust, aren’t you? Develop some kind of social connection, get them to open up. If you’re spending all this time with them, and not using their product, it could blow the whole thing.”  
  
Not a batted eyelash at the accusation. This is Holden from that first interrogation in Winnebago, completely self-assured and impervious. Maybe even mildly amused.  
  
Bill sighs, already uncomfortable with his next words: “...and you used morphine, in Madison. You told me yourself.”  
  
“When I was--” Holden begins in a suppressed, exasperated huff. He doesn’t finish his sentence. Even with the exemplary poker face, Bill can tell he’s fuming.  
  
_When you were attempting to kill yourself?_ Bill raises a falsely encouraging eyebrow. It is morbidly satisfying, laying out the wretched history of the man before him. Holden can’t avoid being known. Not by him.  
  
Holden’s gritted teeth barely allow clearance to the words he’s forcing out. The indifferent facade seems close to fracturing. “I was not using morphine for recreational reasons.”  
  
“You had a dealer. Who you knew, who you didn’t want to get into trouble. So you were some kinda addict.”  
  
“I wasn’t an addict-- I was--” A spasm of tension bounces around his features, from a low, clamped jaw to a wincing blink. “I was buying sleeping pills. I was having trouble sleeping, because of my condition. If I’d gone to a doctor, not that I could have afforded to, I would have risked the schizophrenic label on my medical record.”  
  
Bill folds his arms sternly. “We don’t need to debate this. Track marks are much easier to spot on a living man.”  
  
Holden is slower to process than usual. Then, a despairing groan as he wipes a forceful hand down his brows, his eyes, finally dragging over his lips. “You can’t be serious.”  
  
“Do I look like I’m joking? Show me your arms.”  
  
Holden’s posture hardens. “Get out,” he points. “I have work to do. I have a dead man to identify.”  
  
“Show me your arms. ...this is the last time I ask, Holden.”  
  
“Is it? And if I don’t cooperate? Are you going to pin me down and undress me?” Holden asks haughtily. He mirrors Bill’s posture, arms folding tight over each other. “...no, I didn’t think so.”  
  
“Do not-- do not try to derail this, Holden.”  
  
The young man nods along patronizingly and doesn’t reply.  
  
Bill tries to restore purpose into his inexplicably quivering hands. If he reaches out, takes Holden’s wrist-- he can’t actually bring himself to use anything like force. Holden’s not a criminal. He’s a friend, at the very least. ...a friend who is potentially endangering his own life, Bill tries to convince himself.  
  
It’s Holden that folds. Still glowering murderously up, he tugs the sleeves of the fisherman’s sweater up, catching on the blue flannel shirt beneath. But he has that unbuttoned and up too, over the crook of his winter-pale elbow. Then the other sleeve, too. A few freckles showing around the lower edges of his upturned forearm. Two unblemished inner elbows, flickers of cyan blue beneath the gently creased skin. Below that, on his left arm, the skin rises awfully into a tectonic eruption of rippled pink scar tissue. Bill’s seen it before, twice. Both times, he had plenty else on his mind. Now, only this doomed attempt at healing. Thick, jagged, irregular, more of a gouge than a slice. A blunt blade, then. Something scrounged together in prison. Stitched up by someone without future aesthetics in mind.  
  
“Right,” Bill says. He finds himself touching his own wrist, drops the hold self-consciously. Then, awkwardly, “thank you.”  
  
“Some users inject themselves between their toes. I could take off my--” Holden continues with faux-accommodating venom.  
  
“It’s fine. ...I believe you, Holden.”  
  
Holden scoffs at the wording. He turns away from Bill now, rushing to roll both sleeves down. “...I was wrong,” he mutters. “About you being able to tell whether I’m lying. More a matter of your perpetual mistrust for me being, once or twice, proved correct. Can you please leave?”  
  
A crushing ocean current swallows Bill as he nods. He feels the irrevocable tragedy of the day’s events set in as his own reality. “I… I’m serious. About tanking your case. Stop doing this, Holden. ...please.”  
  
“Go, Bill,” Holden mutters.  
  
Bill clenches a fist nervously. “Look, I didn’t mean to-- fine. You know what? Fuck you for lying to me.” He regrets the immature words before he’s even turned around to leave. He doesn’t fasten his boots before he closes the door behind him.

  
  
  
He ties his laces badly, having to squint against the weather. The cabin’s exterior is inhospitable and turbulent, but somehow a relief. That is, until Bill notices snow packing around the tires of his hired truck. There's more piling treacherously onto the cleared driveway.  
  
What was an inconstant flurry of snowfall is a hurtling blizzard now. The wind tries to slip beneath his unbuttoned coat, wrench away the protective fleece. He rushes to fasten the parka, pull the hood over his exposed, smarting ears. The snow is coming in almost vertically-- he can’t even make out the ocean down the rise beneath Holden’s cabin. Maybe there’s something black roiling away at the limits of his vision.  
  
In the chaotic ambience of an arriving storm, Bill finds himself unable to avoid Nancy. She’s inches away, unavoidably incorporeal. That horrified withdrawal haunts him. He dealt with the Holden problem. On to the next. He has to get home.  
  
Bill swears and barely hears himself. He battles his way to his car, and begins trying to scuff away the rapidly compacting snow. It’s falling so thick that he can feel it plastering to his unprotected legs, wind and ice fighting through the woolen slacks. He’s got one wheel mostly freed, though the escape route to the highway is growing increasingly impassable. And the highway beyond, probably. _Shit, I should have got snow-chains. Jim Barney would have got snow-chains._  
  
As he rounds the car to start in on the other rear tire, he sees a rippling mass of dark fabric approaching. Holden fights his dressing gown down over his sweater, and then stares disbelievingly in Bill’s direction.  
  
Bill goes back to trying to dislodge the built up slopes of snow.  
  
“Come back inside,” Holden calls, trying to outcompete the wind sweeping down the barren hillside behind. Hard to tell his precise mood over that ungodly cacophony.  
  
Bill says nothing, shuffles away to resume his war against the snow drifts.  
  
“You’d be a lunatic to drive on the highway in this weather,” Holden half-sighs, half-yells.  
  
Bill’s boot swings again, obliterating a clump of fallen snow into a settling white. It is snatched by the wind, flung several feet down the driveway where it distributes itself into a whole new problem.  
  
“There’s really no need to be stubborn about this,” Holden says primly, as he approaches.  
  
Bill finally ceases his futile efforts. He hunches around towards Holden, rubbing his forehead. “It wasn’t supposed to snow until tomorrow,” he huffs.  
  
“You could write a letter to the weather management,” Holden says, sarcastic but not mean. “Let them know they’re off schedule. Maybe they’ll sort it out. Especially if FBI is asking.”  
  
“You shouldn’t bring up my job quite so much. Makes you seem jealous,” Bill says over the wind. He immediately winces at his own comment.  
  
“Of course I’m jealous,” Holden says, strangely sincere. His arms are wrapped around himself to ward against the deadly cold. “Come inside, okay?”  
  
Bill nods, as much to get Holden inside as himself.  
  
They traipse in tandem back to merciful shelter. Inside, door firmly closed, Bill shrugs off his snow-splattered parka, then plonks down on a step to unlace his boots.  
  
Holden is rushing to brush snow off his slippers before it melts into the sheepskin. He beats out his dressing gown next, hangs it beside the parka on the coat rack. “I doubt anyone clears the highway before, at least, tomorrow morning. Assuming the snowfall has even stopped by then. I’ll set up the sofa for you,” he says, stringently polite but not really looking in Bill’s direction. He’s trying very hard to smooth his hair back into place.  
  
Bill groans as he pulls loose his snow boots.  
  
Holden turns with a withering raised eyebrow. “Snow. In Alaska. What an inconceivable inconvenience,” he mutters under his breath as he marches past Bill and up into the cabin’s main room. He opens a side door, disappears for a moment. Bill huddles over the fireplace and tries to ignore the now very familiar clothing of John Doe, recreated in presumably identical purchases. The t-shirt is coat-hangered and disembodied against the wall, bulldog clipped to a pair of jeans that descend down to dress shoes. Holden returns, tosses a stiffly thick blanket over the small, cushion-packed sofa, returns to his desk. He opens a thick textbook that Bill can’t make out the title of. Makes a note, goes back to assiduous reading.  
  
Bill backs up from the fire, wandering over to speculate the quality of his night’s sleep. Maybe he’d fit, if he amputated below the knee. He rearranges the pillows, glancing back over to his impressively impassive host. No apparent break in attention from the book. Holden’s cold shoulder really is impeccable. Something about the young man’s presence, even in such a foul mood, soothes Bill’s resuming anxieties about his destroyed homelife. Holden makes another, longer note on a pad.  
  
Bill clears his throat, and doesn’t earn so much as a glance. “Well, I don’t have the subpoena for your investigative material yet. ...maybe you’d deign to talk me through it anyway?”  
  
Holden slams the book shut.


	6. Chapter 6

“You’re not seriously going to get a court order,” Holden says roughly, then, “what if it comes out I was the person who unearthed this all?”  
  
“I’m going to protect you in all this. Of course,” Bill assures.   
  
“...how? I have, as you deduced, bought a sizeable quantity of heroin from the men I’m investigating.”  
  
“Well, Holden, I haven’t got that far, exactly. I’ll figure it out. I always figure out how to protect you in the end.”  
  
“I got shot in Madison because you didn’t do that,” Holden says under his breath, though there’s no effort, no vitriol in the nasty quip.  
  
“Ah, but then, I showed up, played the hero and save your ass. Don’t try to undersell me here. I’ve read the book,” Bill ribs.  
  
Holden seems to violently restrain his own smile. He doesn’t look up from the page he’s glaring down at.  
  
“Look, I never thought you were a junkie. I shouldn’t have mentioned what you were buying in Madison. I didn’t mean it like… I meant, uh, you might believe you had the nous to to safely do heroin. Establish your street cred, or whatever. I was worried you were _too_ committed to this investigation.”  
  
Holden speaks without eye contact. “Bill, I’m mentally ill. I’m heavily medicated. I think about every single thing I’m putting in my body.” His hand seems steady as he turns a page. “Opiate use can cause psychosis,” he finishes, simply.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“I did a bump of coke once, when I was with them. I saw no way around it.”  
  
_“Oh.”_ _  
_ _  
_ Holden is hiding a smirk as he focuses on his reading. He seems pleased to be back at odds with Bill.  
  
Bill calms himself before he speaks. “Well, people have done worse things undercover.”  
  
Holden scoffs. “Yes, but I’m not actually LE, so I’m not actually undercover, so--”  
  
“This is coming from a place of concern, Holden. If you were, uh, ‘actually undercover’, you would have a whole network protecting you. People ready to bust in if things went ugly. You didn’t have any of that.”  
  
Holden looks as if he’s about to nonchalantly shrug. He glances up at Bill’s stern expression, and seems to think the better of it.  
  
“...walk me through,” Bill entreats. “Hell, maybe the two of us working together can solve the damn thing, so you don’t have to risk your neck again.”  
  
Holden hums unconvinced to himself as he continues to read. Turns another page.  
  
Bill waits.  
  
Holden gestures with feigned carelessness towards a section of photographs on the far wall, outside of the halo of the desk lamp. Bare, rectangular shapes in the firelight. “Put the overhead on and take a look.”  
  
Bill walks over to the unsealed wiring, toggles the industrial looking switch. The hanging bulb sputters to life with an audible hum. “So, explain to me again why this isn’t with the police?”  
  
“This isn’t a conspiracy,” Holden says, startlingly close. “This isn’t Madison. It’s simply a matter of investigative capacity. I couldn’t do it through Anchorage PD. That department isn’t set up for complex, long term surveillance. I mean, have you seen the way they’ve camped out in a foxhole on some street where someone _possibly_ saw the Eklutna Doe? What a joke.”  
  
Bill avoids nodding along, even though he wants to. “What would you do instead?”  
  
“Undercover work. Tell vice to lay off. Talk to as many girls as possible who are completely unafraid of being charged with solicitation. Check the escalation angle. Girls who were picked up, felt unsafe, got away with their lives. Girls who were hurt, but made it out. He might have committed sexual violence that stops short of murder.”  
  
“Anchorage PD have a mandate from town hall to crack down hard on prostitution,” Bill says, rubbing his eyes. “If they know someone is soliciting, they’re going to have to charge them. ...if those girls are off the street, they’re safer.”  
  
“Uh huh," Holden affirms, sarcastically. "So much safer, not being able to talk to the police without being thrown into prison. Ditto the drug crack down. You’d think Nixon was still president up here, with those backward policies--”  
  
“--there are flaws, but--” Bill tries to interrupt.  
  
“It’s self-defeating. They’d arrest my two contacts, then try to get them to flip. They wouldn’t. They have no incentive too, not while we have nothing that connects them to John Doe. And as soon as any arrests happen, everyone is going to go into lockdown. I need everyone relaxed if I’m going to get anything offhandedly remarked to me.”  
  
“So why not tell Jim? I mean, before you started chumming it up with potentially murderous heroin dealers. When you first noticed the track marks. He’s as competent as they come. He would have acted on this.”  
  
“By the time I'd figured out the heroin use, it was abundantly clear to me that the FBI were not going to become officially involved in this case. Without official involvement, there would be no undercover operation, no subtle approach to solving this case. It would have just been a data point in a file that went onto your desk to be summarily ignored.”  
  
“Maybe if you’d been upfront about the information you had, official involvement would have happened,” Bill retorts.  
  
“The information was that I thought the lesions on his arms appeared to be track marks. That was all. Until I put in the hours and hours of legwork, of collecting and collating information from every contact I’d made in the Anchorage club scene--”  
  
“Anchorage has a club scene?” Bill asks, righteousness momentarily displaced by confusion.  
  
“Yes. Not that you’d know it from the way Anchorage PD is treating the Eklutna case. I had a perfect demonstration of how idiotically they’d approach this case. I mean, peeking from behinds the blinds of coffee shop. Come on.”  
  
“Surveillance works, Holden.”  
  
“I’m not against surveillance,” Holden protests, and gestures over towards the wall of long-range photographs. “That’s surveillance. Sitting on your ass eating pastries is self-indulgence.”  
  
Bill grits his teeth. “We’re working with the very limited information we have to work with.”  
  
“Don’t feed me a line, Bill. You’re great at your job. You would never implement such a haphazard half-measure. You don’t need to cover for these local morons. ...Special Agent Barney agrees with me that it’s ineffectual. He’s stuck doing shifts up there. You know your own man is wasting his valuable time, to keep Anchorage PD on side? Surely--”  
  
“Are you seriously going to try to use Jim Barney to bolster your argument? The man you opted not to trust with the information you uncovered? He’s a professional, Holden. He knows you don’t burn bridges unless you have no other choice. We are here in an advisory capacity on the Eklutna case-- now, we’re very likely going to recommend phasing out surveillance. Barney’s only up here another week, max. There’s a system. Jim is smart enough to follow it.”  
  
“The system,” Holden says, bitterly. “Right. Worked out so well for me.”  
  
“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it,” Bill says severely. “...the FBI aren’t the only law enforcement agency capable of solving crimes. Get that bullshit out of your head. I advise _because_ I believe in the police on the ground. In any case, you didn’t tell the feds. You didn’t tell anyone.”  
  
The young man appears briefly stumped. “If I’d thought telling Jim Barney that John Doe was a heroin user would have led to an official FBI task force on the ground up here in Homer, I would have. Jim Barney wasn’t even in Anchorage at the time. Back in Virginia with his family. I-- I was gathering information with a mind to hand it over. I know this case isn’t your normal fare. One body six years back means we’re most likely not looking for a multiple murderer. I needed to build a solid case to justify federal involvement.”  
  
“And then you, what, slipped over and accidentally bought some heroin?” Bill asks sarcastically, then shakes his head at his own unnecessary antagonism. “Okay, okay, I am gonna put my qualms aside with your methods and listen to the results.”  
  
“Are you?”  
  
“How is the case-building going, Holden?”  
  
Holden sniffs disbelievingly, but as always, the allure of explanation is too much for him: “A lot of contract workers have been through here in the last decade, working on the pipeline, mostly. Even now, there’s plenty of guys who travel up here for seasonal work in Prudhoe Bay. Mostly younger men who are cashing hefty paychecks. They all come in and out through Anchorage.” Holden shrugs. “Hence, a club scene. Prostitution. Drug trade. Money has a tendency to get spent.”  
  
“Lot of heroin users in Alaska?” Bill asks, narrowly edging judgement out the words.  
  
Holden vacillates an open hand. “Some. Other drugs are a lot more common."  
  
Bill nods, unfortunately seeing the logic behind Holden's line of inquiry.  
  
"One of them was a woman who dances at a club in town. She has a lot of Inupiat ancestry, but she came down here for high school. A mandatory boarding school. She started using heroin when she was seventeen. I didn’t ask how old she is now, but… but I think, about my age? Maybe early thirties. She covers up the track marks when she goes on stage. There’s an ugly underbelly up here. There’s so many women like that, Bill. Like your Eklutna Doe, I’d be willing to bet. Not just women, who end up trapped in this cycle. Lots of people who drop out of high school, end up trying to scrape whatever they can out of the rich, out-of-state drillers who come up here.”  
  
“I get it, Holden. But my job is catching violent killers, not fixing some endemic societal ill.”  
  
“This is who we’re looking for, Bill. Someone on the fraying edges of society. If you’re not willing to immerse yourself in it, understand it, you’re not going to learn a thing.”  
  
“...so you ‘immersed yourself’?’  
  
Holden sighs to himself. “I wanted to meet other users. It was a place to start. I met five dealers in total. Dozens of users. I could eliminate a lot of them on the basis that they weren’t living anywhere near Alaska six years ago. The rest, I had to build a rapport with. There was a chance that one of them knew my John Doe. In the cases of those three dealers that were in Anchorage when John Doe died, a chance that he bought from them. Homer is much too small a town to score in. I don't think John Doe ever spent serious time here, anyway. Too small a town for nobody to remember him. If he was doing heroin, he was getting it in Anchorage.”  
  
Bill frowns. “Six years is a long interim for a dealer to remember a junkie.”

Holden frowns seriously. “Yes. But I had more to go on. I had Homer. If you’ve seen my tidal charts, you’d know that the currents around Kachemak bay--”  
  
“I’ve read your damn file,” Bill interjects. "The water that John Doe was in would have been fairly stationary through the months he would have been submerged, ergo, he was dumped somewhere off Homer. Doesn't mean he ever set foot in this town. Could be someone went past and threw him overboard--”  
  
“But there is a Homer connection,” Holden says triumphantly. “That woman I was talking about, Marie, introduced me to her dealer-- well-- her dealer and on-and-off-again boyfriend. His name’s Slobodan, goes by Dan. Daniel sometimes. He has a cousin, Dragutin. Moves product when Dan isn’t available. They deal out of Slobodan’s apartment. ...the one you followed me too. Marie had a blue ink tattoo of a tiger. Similar line work to the eagle on John Doe, though I'd really need an expert opinion on similarities. Visually, they were similar. She told me she got it done in Chicago. She moved there for a couple of years, in the late sixties. Daniel and Dragutin had the same sort of tattoos. Both of them hail from the Midwest originally.”  
  
“Uh huh,” Bill says, skeptically. A blue ink tattoo isn’t all that much to go on, either. “Do you have last names?”  
  
“They use different names on different documentation. As best as I can tell, his real surname is--” Holden sounds out a name that Bill cannot quite decipher. ‘Milkovich’, maybe. He doesn’t need to muse it out; Holden has side-stepped to under-development wall space. Bill unsuccessfully searches his pockets for reading glasses. In his suitcase, in his snowed-in vehicle. He squints instead.  
  
A band of black, hand-written text on white card reads: ‘Slobodan “Dan” Miljković. A.K.A. Dan Marković. A.K.A. Daniel Mitchelson.’ Holden's neatly printed handwriting has become very familiar.  
  
Below the name is a black-and-white, distance-blurred photograph of a thirty-something blond in a slouchy leather jacket and lighter sweatpants. His expression, even distantly, is lively and amused.  
  
Directly beside is another photo. A man, possibly younger. Thickset, with a dark smear of hair that descends down to cover his eyebrows. A small, dissatisfied mouth pinches into a cigarette. ‘Dragutin ??? A.K.A. Dragutin Mitchelson,’ reads the text above.  
  
“I got a look at Dan’s passport. Told him I didn’t believe he’d visited the USSR,” Holden either explains or boasts. “...their uncle is one Ivan Nikolić, cocaine kingpin, currently serving twenty odd years in upstate New York. Dan seems to have ties to a couple of big names in the drug business. Mostly in New York, Chicago, Miami. Or, at least, he claims to have ties.” Holden shrugs. “He certainly has a supply chain in place. Heroin, coke, marijuana, some pharmaceuticals. But these two aren’t big time gangsters. They’re street level grunts. I mean, you saw where Dan lives.”  
  
“...I’m not hearing a Homer connection yet…?”  
  
Holden skips across the floor, like a skater skyward bound. No triple axel ensues; instead, a fingertip comes to rest on a newspaper clipping beside a business card. “Dragutin mentioned a shipment coming in via cargo ship. I checked with the port authorities about incoming vessels. Among them, a ship that belonged to Peter Bodrazic. He’s had trouble with Seattle police before, a conviction for evading cargo broker's fee. Serbian ex-pat, owns a freight shipping company. Brings dry goods, vehicles, speciality drilling equipment into the Port of Anchorage. Unloads, stocks up on petroleum barrels. Now, when I say shipping company, I’m not talking about Maersk. I think maybe four, five ships total. But they’re all running in and out of Anchorage, most only as far as Seattle.” Beneath the orange business card is a collection of barebones shipping schedules.  
  
Bill finds himself pacing over, leaning in to discern the dates and times. “How’d you--”  
  
“Wore a nice suit and pretended I wanted to import a lot of second-rate ceiling insulation,” Holden hand-waves. “The important thing was that, if I claimed to be on a strict time crunch, I could find out exactly when his shipments were coming and going. When his next cargo arrival was due into Anchorage, I kept an eye on Dan’s apartment.”  
  
“...and you did that because…?”  
  
“I had a hunch. If it was coming in on the water, that meant access to a boat-- access to dump the body.” Holden turns to Bill, shooing him back towards another section of the wall. “Dan and Dragutin drove off late that night. Ship docked hours later. Have you spent much time in Homer?”  
  
“I have driven through it to this cabin. Twice, now.”  
  
“Nearly all of the water access is from the Homer Spit. Next time a ship was due, I parked my bike behind a row of summer houses, watched and waited. Nothing. Well, they’d just got a shipment in, and this was coming past Homer in broad daylight. Next time, nothing. Third time was the charm,” Holden says, animated, enthralling. He’s onto another series of colourless photographs. Haphazard, lacking clarity. Bill can tell they were taken at night. Sequenced, he can make out a station wagon steering a boat off a dry dock. Two men working it down a boat ramp. “They showed up. Took an aluminum dingy out. An hour later, they came back. Put an icebox in the back of their car. Drove off.”  
  
Bill feels his stomach flip when he realises the nighttime photos were taken by Holden. Alone, no firearm, no back-up. “So, you have them on access to the dump site. But what’s the motive? Who is the victim?”  
  
“That’s why I need to keep _working_ this. I have some ideas how to guide our conversation towards this case. Media coordination, maybe. Dragutin is very forthcoming. He sees me as a friend.”  
  
_And he’ll feel betrayed if he figures you out._ Bill martials his throttling anxiety. “Holden, this is-- this is brilliant. This is what an entire police department spends months trying to piece together. But you cannot, _cannot_ risk your own life for these answers. Not when there’s another way forward.”  
  
Holden seems hypnotized with the passing praise. Then, the honey-drenched pleasure is blinked away. “This investigation is what I lied to protect,” he explains curtly.  
  
Bill opens his mouth to retaliate. Then, instead, “I understand. I get it. ...I can see how hard you’ve worked on this. Holden, I won’t-- I would never spike the case out of spite.”  
  
“I knew that,” Holden mutters, straightening one of the tacked up photographs.  
  
“I’m gonna do everything humanly possible. Use our resources, our databases, and…” Bill finishes short. He forces his next words: “If it comes down to it, we use you. Safely. With back-up waiting right around the corner. But we’re gonna exhaust every other avenue first. I promise you. You don’t have to trust that Anchorage PD will handle this strategically. I will be here to make sure they do.”  
  
Holden smiles in insincere gratitude, not meeting Bill’s eyes. Correcting the photo again by a hair-breadth, examining the layout. “Sure. When your wife and child can spare you.”  
  
“Well, my wife just kicked me out. So nobody is ‘sparing’ me right now.”  
  
Holden startles, knocking the photo askew. He turns at once. “What? Why did she--?”  
  
“A man called her. Ellis, probably.” Bill rubs his eyes hard enough to see bright, wintery stars. “Please do not react to this with...” he tries to find the appropriate word, and fails. Maybe he didn’t try too hard.  
  
He reopens his eyes to Holden’s unsparing evaluation. The last thing he can cope with right now. Bill departs the shared spotlight for the dimly lit kitchen.  
  
“...with…?” Holden nudges, as he begins to stalk the distance separating them.  
  
“Anything,” Bill decides upon, trying not to look back. The first cupboard he opens contains a lot of canned vegetables, several jars of pasta and rice, longlife milk. “Just don’t react.” He opens the next. Oil. A spice rack. Salt. Muesli bars. “...no booze?”  
  
“I’m medicated.”  
  
“Sure, but--”  
  
“I don’t drink, Bill. ...for what it’s worth, I’m sorry you’re both hurting right now.”  
  
“ _Right now?_ ” Bill echoes, turning to glare.  
  
“Hurting. Unqualified,” the young man corrects rapidly, hands raised. They lower. A vaguely accusatory expression formulates. “...if you want to take it out on someone, I suppose I make sense. I am the source of your marital strife. But I’m not going to pretend I’m some kind of heartless homewrecker to justify your--”  
  
“That’s not what I want,” Bill huffs. “I’m sorry if I’m being argumentative,” he replies through a tight jaw, then closes both cupboards too firmly.  
  
Holden looks thrown by the apology. “It’s fine.”  
  
“Unless I missed something fairly important at my own marriage ceremony, you were not at the altar, in front of my family and friends, in front of my betrothed, in front of God, vowing to be faithful. So you don’t have a lot to be sorry for. Not compared to me.”  
  
Holden seems intrigued by Bill’s reply. The tactless question soon follows. “Are you religious?”  
  
“...yes,” Bill informs him unconvincingly, arms folded.  
  
Holden squints. “You never talk about--”  
  
“I go to church.”  
  
“I didn’t ask whether you went to church. I asked whether you were religious.”  
  
Bill succumbs to a long, defeated sigh. “I’ve seen a lot over the course of my life that is hard to reconcile with a deliberate, powerful, merciful creator. I don’t have all the answers. ...I go to church. I listen. I am open to reconciliation.”  
  
“That’s what I thought,” Holden says, satisfied.  
  
“...for what it’s worth, I think religion is healthy. I think it’s a good moral system to have codified into you, a good community to be part of--”  
  
“That’s not belief, though. You think codified moral systems and community are healthy? That’s-- I mean, you could make the same argument for joining the Ku Klux Klan--”  
  
“Do you ever listen to yourself?” Bill asks, half-amazement, half-annoyance.  
  
Holden closes his mouth. Not for very long. “It’s a cop out. Sure, the thing that’s ‘healthy’ and ‘socially acceptable’ is easier. Have you ever thought that if you’re not sure that God exists, you shouldn’t be in that church? That you’re trying to form a community with people who are fundamentally different from you? I mean, do they understand you? Do you understand them?”  
  
“Is this about church, or about my marriage,” Bill asks without wanting a response, going for cigarettes. At least those aren’t in the fucking car.  
  
Holden draws closer. “I saw you at dinner with Nancy, and it was-- it was disappointing. To see how joyless, how dulled you are by that life. I mean, Bill, you love your work. And you had to pretend it was a miserable chore. I saw you smother the life out of your own enthusiasm when I mentioned cases I was working.”  
  
“That’s not true. I do not love my work. Anyone who enjoys looking at victimized women and children should be in an institution,” Bill retorts.  
  
Holden doesn’t blink. “It _is_ true. I’ve seen you during active cases. You are your best self. ...and I think, whether or not you want to admit it, I help you be your best self.”  
  
“In what regard, Holden? I yell at you, you yell at me-- is that my best self?”  
  
“I don’t yell at you,” Holden says, frowning.  
  
“Fine. You don’t yell. You-- you provoke me into escalation by saying deliberately cruel and distasteful things. Try to set me off. Because you don’t like, what did you say, ‘walking on eggshells’?”  
  
Holden’s expression immediately sours. Bill chalks up another petty victory; an advanced, embattled front within Holden Ford’s psyche.  
  
He rewards himself with a puff of tobacco. He probably should have asked before smoking inside a cabin that Holden doesn't own. He's not going to stub it out now. ”Since I started looking into this case, you have been nothing but antagonistic and deceptive. And that’s the truth. I might have been an asshole, but you should own your own behaviour too.”  
  
“Spending time around you hurts, Bill. I’ve been willing to put that aside to get this case solved. You’re failing your responsibility to this dead man, and to any family or friends he might have who deserve answers.”  
  
Bill scowls. “Well. I’m sorry. If I’d known I’d lose my-- my home life, my family, no matter what I did up here, I might have behaved differently.”  
  
“What might you have done?” Holden asks incisively, leaning closer. There’s something improper about the insinuations.  
  
Bill clears his throat and turns back towards Holden’s over-laden desk to hunt for an ashtray. “Might have got involved in the case sooner. The rule-- the rule about not getting involved in your cases-- I mean, that was for her. I was trying. I was more than trying. I was doing good, wasn’t I?”  
  
“At your job? No. At staying away from me? …sure,” Holden adjudicates.  
  
“If you weren’t putting yourself in danger, I wouldn’t have seen you at all,” Bill justifies, to nobody in particular. No ashtray. He leans down to tap cigarette ash into the coals of the woodfire.  
  
“I--” Holden starts.  
  
“Sorry,” Bill apologizes, quickly. “I mean, if I wasn’t worried about you, I wouldn’t be here.”  
  
Holden toys with the cord of his dressing gown. “I was shocked that you showed up here. Both times,” he admits. “I really have gone out of my way to… to go out of the way.”  
  
“I guess you’re lucky to have a friend as persistent as me.”  
  
There’s the flash of an acknowledging grin. “Now you don’t have to hold me at arm’s length. We could work this together, Bill. Official FBI involvement. I’ll hand over everything. You treat me as-- as a confidential informant, or a--”  
  
“Holden. I’m not giving up on Nancy,” Bill interrupts. “I’m going to get this case solved. That’s it.”  
  
The smile drops. “You had sex with a man. Are you really expecting forgiveness?” Holden asks, perplexed.  
  
“We didn’t--” Bill begins.  
  
“Are you going to explain to Nancy what we did, and didn’t do?” Holden asks incredulously. “Come on. It’s over.”  
  
“I’m going to-- I’m going to make things right-- I’m going to make things better than they are. We have a son together. We’ve been together for nearly two decades.”  
  
“You can’t seriously think that this is some marital hitch to get over,” Holden says softly.  
  
“I don’t want to hear your opinion on my marriage.”  
  
“You brought it up, Bill. Why else, except that you want me to talk you out of going back to--”  
  
“That is not why I brought it up,” Bill growls. “I tell people the truth, even without a motive underlying any divulgence. You could fucking try it.”  
  
“You told me you didn’t want a reaction from me,” Holden retorts sharply, folding his arms. “You say it’s your own fault, ergo, you aren’t after an apology. So why did you tell me?”  
  
“I guess I thought, maybe, we were friends. I thought it would be nice to have a friend right now.”  
  
Holden seems completely taken aback. “Of course we’re friends,” he insists. There’s an urgency to the claim. “...I… right. I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
“No,” Bill scoffs.  
  
“...do you want…” Holden’s eyes roam the gallery of unrepentant morbidity, settle towards kitchenette. “...tea?”  
  
“Wow. This isn’t a strong suit, huh?” Bill says, smiling wryly in spite of himself. “I will have one less thing to worry about with this case closed. So let’s--”  
  
Holden nods attentively. Too attentively. Panic and kindness in one. “May I talk you through the case? Or would you prefer to sleep on it, and start in the morning? Whatever you want, whatever you need.”  
  
Bill could embrace the strange, prickly kid doing his best impression of a therapist. He doesn’t. “I do not need this cotton wool bullshit,” he grouches, on instinct.  
  
Holden hesitates, then steps in closer. He settles his palm flat and full-contact against Bill’s shoulder. “I’m going to need you on this. Pull yourself together,” he says in a deliberate tone. An in-joke Bill is too exhausted to perfectly recall the provenance of.  
  
Bill tries not to lean into the affection. “I probably should sleep. I want to be at my best.”  
  
The touch lingers.


	7. Chapter 7

Bill isn’t sure how he ended up with the bed, and Holden ended up with the couch. Holden cracked a ruthlessly casual joke about the discomfort of prison bunks, steered Bill without much physical force. Bill remembers that. Holden caretaking almost professionally. Maybe he had to look after his mother, when her mental illness rendered her beyond basic daily tasks.  
  
Holden came through with Bill’s suitcase, out of breath, knocked around by the weather. He didn’t linger suggestively. Set it down, smiled gently, cleared out.  
  
Bill wonders if he’s getting a deliberate show of just how much Holden can respect his boundaries. Or, maybe, Holden is genuinely concerned.  
  
Whatever Holden had said about not minding sleeping rough, he clearly relishes the comfort of a real bed now that he has the option. It is neatly made, layers of expensive comforters and two down-soft pillows. Bill hasn’t seen any other blow-out purchases since Holden’s newfound prosperity (expert opinions on cold case forensics notwithstanding) but he suspects the expensive bedding was recent bought. Certainly not in keeping with the aesthetic quality of the rest of the cabin. The double bed takes up the majority of the tiny bedroom, wedged up against the inward sloped wall. Tucked on the bedside dresser, beside a retrofitted oil lantern with a bulb threaded inside, is an orange pharmaceutical bottle. Bill picks it up to read the label: he’s met with a Mondrian blur of primary colours. He finds his reading glasses, and picks it up again. ‘Ford, Holden. Largactil, 25mg. 4 tablets by mouth daily.’ Prescribed all of the way back in New York. The bottle is mostly full. Holden had plenty of canned food in anticipation of the unavoidable isolation of Alaskan winter. Bill would like to believe his mental health is also cared for, while snowed in.  
  
He can’t help a certain entitlement to Holden’s private possessions, even beyond protective paranoia. As if this were a crime scene to poke through. Bill thinks of the bedroom of a teenage Holden Ford in Madison, Wisconsin. He had spent long hours scrutinizing the documented paraphernalia from the home of the supposed Madison Child Murderer, back when Bill was trying to glean a psychopath’s inner thoughts. An itemized list of his bookshelf (from a freshly printed Capote to a warped, splitting paperback on the Hall-Mills murder); photocopies of missing posters and a map of the kidnappings that quickly became condemnatory court exhibits; weighty black garbage bags planted by Detective Bradshaw; perhaps saddest, in retrospect, an outdated FBI training manual. Holden Ford’s current bedroom is tidy, sparse of personalisation. The one piece of art within the room (a fading watercolour of snow geese in flight) certainly predates Holden’s occupancy. No bedside reading material, but Bill wasn’t expecting to see the bold red font of the most recent Jack Higgins sensationalist nonsense. He doubts Holden has been doing any recreational reading whilst in the throes of this obsession. Cold cases are recreation for Holden.  
  
The bottle of Largactil is still in Bill’s hand. Suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of invasiveness, he sets it silently back. He strips into bed clothes, puts away his reading glasses, switches the light off.  
  
He lies down in Holden’s bed and thoughts of its usual occupant do not disperse.  
  
Bill hasn’t let himself think about that night in Greenwich. Any fleeting recollection is accompanied by sudden, breathtaking guilt-- like falling flat on his back from ten feet up. Not just Bill's betrayal of his family. Bill saw the immediate, horrifying ramifications to his own actions for Holden. The young man ending up in a hospital bed, anemic and shivering and pleading not to be sent to an asylum. The whole bloody, muddy mess doesn’t allow direct cause and effect to be established, but Bill is certain Holden wouldn’t have poisoned himself if they hadn’t ended up in bed together.  
  
Bill has more than fleeting recollections to deal with now. The bed has some unidentifiable scent of Holden Ford; it prompts not-entirely-involuntary memories. Bill is immersed in vivid, technicolour images of Holden’s unclothed back, the muscles bunching around his spine, the rich swell of his hips. That triumphant smirk as Holden nestled himself between Bill’s thighs. Still had an attitude, even then. Maybe fucking someone is easier when you spend so much time fuming at them.  
  
Holden wouldn’t be asleep yet. He’d be willing, obliging, if Bill wanted a distraction. More than that. He would be eager to deepen the schism running through Bill’s personal life. Enthusiastic about destroying any chance that Bill might have of making amends. If he were to run into the arms of this boy, just like Nancy suspected, if he proved that Holden loved him, that he loved Holden-- Bill blink his eyes open and stares rigidly at the roof overhead.  
  
_Loved?_  
  
The self-indulgent, petulant lust burns out brief and unbearable. Magnesium that sparks too hot and then dulls frighteningly spent. Vision readjusting, Bill regards the terrifying truth he had been distracted from: that sex is the least of his affair with Holden. Every day since they met, years ago, Holden has centered himself in Bill’s world. Involvement with Holden Ford divides the epochs of Bill’s existence: before Holden Ford; after Holden Ford; with Holden Ford; without Holden Ford. When they speak, Bill thinks of nothing but that conversation for days on end. When they don’t speak, Holden is on his mind regardless. Even more significant than an obsession-- Holden Ford has become the frame for Bill’s own self-conception. He measures himself against Holden’s delusionally high opinion, or alternately, constructs defenses against the young man’s merciless indictments of his shortcomings. The question is no longer ‘am I good enough?’, but rather, ‘am I good enough for Holden Ford?’.  
  
A high esteem to hold this young, erratic, duplicitous young man in. And yet.  
  
_And yet_ , Bill thinks defeatedly to himself.  
  
He calms his breathing, and tries to sleep.  
  
For some reason, it comes easily. Almost as if he’s comforted by his realisation.

The truth is still there in the morning, but it’s easier to ignore.

Bill studies up on Holden’s research while Holden makes eggs. The fire is picking up again, but both of them are huddled inside their warmest clothing, breathing bright white huffs. It’s bitterly cold, but there’s no deep creaking from a buffeting wind beyond the log walls.  
  
“I’m not a good cook,” Holden rushes out, as he bring breakfast over to Bill’s reading spot, right beside the fireplace. “One of my roommates drilled a few recipes into me. But-- don’t expect--”  
  
Bill takes the plate with a grateful smile. “Didn’t spend much time on kitchen duty?” he tries to make light, and at once feels like an insensitive asshole.  
  
“They keep the suicide risks away from the sharps,” Holden comments nonchalantly. He picks up his piece of toast, bites in. “I’ll really appreciate your thoughts. I’ve missed your pushback.”  
  
“Pushback, that’s a nice way of putting it,” Bill says, sliding the reading glasses down. He takes a bite of the eggs. “These are fine, Holden, I really don’t know what you’re worrying about.”  
  
Holden visibly brightens, then hides it by eating faster. “Oh, coffee?”  
  
“Thank you,” Bill says. “I should-- do you have blank note paper somewhere? I should be making my own notes. People I need to be contacting, if we ever get out of this cabin.”  
  
“I’m sure we could survive a couple of days in each other’s company. We’ve already got the argument out of the way, after all,” Holden says from by the coffee machine. “There’s blank notebooks in the desk drawer. Pens… ah, somewhere.”  
  
Bill finds them, returns to his breakfast. He only breaks concentration to murmur a thank you to Holden, when he sets a coffee within reach.  
  
Holden cleans the kitchen, goes back to reading his textbook. Bill can see the title now: ‘Social Disability: Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, Crime, and Social Disadvantage’. He raises his eyebrows in Holden’s direction, to no acknowledgement. Bill goes back to his own methodical note-taking, grinning around his coffee.  
  
He finishes one mug, and shuffles across to refill. Holden seem to follow him every step without looking up from his book.  
  
In fact, as Bill continues to work, he becomes increasingly convinced Holden is watching him.

Bill has finished the first pass, and is looking his own notes over when he hears a rumbling outside the cabin.  
  
A disappointed expression crosses Holden’s features. He remedies it as he closes the textbook. “Got here quickly,” he remarks, almost passing for offhand.  
  
Bill checks his watch. _It’s already almost midday. Most people leave their house to work every morning, Holden._ “Do you have a snow shovel so I can get the driveway?”  
  
“Sure. Underneath the stoop. You could finish up here, so that if you have any questions--”  
  
“I need to get back to civilization and start making calls. ...I don’t need to vet your research, okay? I can trust the standard of your work. No, my time is better spent hounding a multitude of law enforcement agencies, finding out what’s floating around on these two, and their associates.”  
  
“Right. Of course,” Holden says. He seems torn between the prospect of new information, and Bill’s departure. “You’ll tell Jim-- Special Agent Barney, then?”  
  
“Sure. I’ll need him on this. ...I’m not going to tell him that you were buying heroin. I think, for the sake of simplicity, we leave the felony out of this retelling.”  
  
  


  
  
Bill shovels snow until the depths of his chest aches from the cold, and then Holden appears to wordlessly take over. Bill watches from the steps for several seconds, then hurries inside to huddle over the smouldering coals in the cast iron fireplace.  
  
Holden comes inside a long time later, out-of-breath, shrugging off the thick nylon coat and wiping sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “That’s-- it’s done.”  
  
“All of it?”  
  
Holden is still breathing heavily, pulling off a dark beanie and hanging that up too. He sits down to unlace his boots. “Uh huh. All of it,” he gets out.  
  
“Huh,” is all Bill says.  
  
Holden crosses towards the fire, fingers outstretched. He appears to be making considerable effort not to pant. His hair that was trapped beneath the beanie is damp, disordered. Holden palms it down, and endearingly, it doesn’t obey at all.  
  
“Thank you,” Bill says, setting down the document he’s making notes on.  
  
“You’re welcome,” Holden dismisses quickly, already trying to peer up at Bill’s to-do list. There’s a few specks of white trapped on his lashes, melting fast.  
  
“I mean, thank you. For being… my friend.” It seems oddly insufficient, but it comes easily enough to Bill’s lips.  
  
There’s a flash of something miserable on Holden’s face, and Bill immediately wishes he’d found a better word.

  
  
He can’t think of a better word during the miserable long drive back to Anchorage. That’s okay, he reassures himself. He has opportunities to explain himself. Holden isn’t leaving Alaska any time soon, and neither is he.  
  
He pulls off the road at the turn off for the Homer spit (engine idling, lest he have to coax it to life again), squinting down at the expanse of concrete and piled black gravel. From this distance it is nigh impossible to tell which boat shed is part of the drug smuggling operation. Not down the end of the spit in the main marina, that’s far too populated and built up. The surveillance photos were bereft of light sources other than the two mens’ torches. He puts his truck into park, and steps into the harsh, briney breeze that skims the lightless, glass-green ocean. Everything has been churned up by last night's storm. Maybe this is how John Doe came to the surface.  
  
Maybe down the closer end of the spit, Bill thinks. There’s a row of boat sheds beside a smaller ramp.  
  
He gets back into his car and drives down the snow-ploughed highway out of Homer.  
  
Sloping beasts of speckled white surround the winding road that cuts timidly along contours. Bill sees a flicker of movement in the drooping underbrush-- a wolf, maybe-- but he can’t make it out before he’s sped past. The hire truck carves past snowy, wind-whipped marshes and long dead trees jutting off-balance, bleached grey-brown against their colourless backdrop. Bill spots a sunken roof dusted with fresh snow, foundations swallowed into the alpine swamp; most likely decaying carnage of the Good Friday Earthquake. Most of the highway hasn’t had the snowfall that Homer received, and hasn’t been plowed, but there’s still the uncomfortable slip through compacted tire marks as he takes tight corners. The sky remains so overcast that Bill almost considers turning on headlights.  
  
His radio is turned up loud, even though it is almost constant static, with the occasional fuzzy, unintelligible murmuring as signals slither their way through narrow breaks in mountain ranges. Between the breadth of research Bill is strategizing and the annoying background distraction, he can almost ignore the unmitigated personal ruin he’s brought on himself.  
  
He largely forgets about his own unfolding life when he’s back in Anchorage and he has work available to him. He books a motel room mostly for the indoor phone, shoveling in mouthfuls of take-out sandwiches while on hold with various federal agencies.  
  
He meets Jim Barney for coffee and has three cups over the slim duration of explanation. Jim is engaged, but psychologically opaque. Bill doesn’t have spare cognitive effort to expend on figuring his colleague’s reaction out; he runs out of time mid-conversation (tasking Barney with compiling all local, state, and federal investigations into Dan, Dragutin, their uncle, and their shipping contact), leaves abruptly to pick up a set of keys from Fish and Wildlife Services across town. Federal begets unto federal, in this case an office space recently vacated after a politically mandated agency merge. It’s still a federally owned building, and Bill is federal. With no recommendations yet decided upon with the Eklutna case, Bill hasn’t had to arrange office space, and the last thing he wants is to run the case out of an unfriendly Anchorage PD headquarters.  
  
The office is cold as the grave, littered with ominously sheeted furniture that is yet to be moved out. Bill gets the heat working, and decides to operate out of a conference room based mostly on how quickly it warms up relative to the rest of the building.

When he’s pulled some white sheeting off desk space and plugged in the ‘50s rotary phone, he leaves a message for Holden. With a librarian at the Homer public library, as instructed. He supplies the address only. No follow-up of ‘get a fucking phone’, as tempting as the rejoinder is.  
  
Bill hunts through his new office, through barren shelves and heavy wood chairs swathed in lightly dusty cotton, and then forcing down a sneeze carries the unearthed ashtray back to the conference room he’s setting up in. He smokes two cigarettes while staring at a blank wall, calls his own home number. Nobody picks up, and he doesn’t leave a message.  
  
He tells himself that Nancy deserves whatever space she wants, tries not to consider it further. Bill gets back to work.

  
  
He’s trying to get a marginally less outdated fax machine up and running when Jim arrives, toting a pizza box in one hand, wrist threaded uncomfortably through his briefcase so he can get the door.  
  
“Brought--” Jim Barney sways to avoid a white-sheeted obstacle. “--brought dinner. And a little information on the Yugoslavians. Our specific Yugoslavians, I mean. Not national statistics.”  
  
Bill grins, and almost means it.

The “little information” is more like a blank space sporting an ‘INFORMATION TBD’ notice. It is confirmation from several agencies and police departments that they have files concerning individuals mentioned. Bill appreciates the number of calls it must have taken. Barney has a dot point summary of Ivan Nikolić’s suspected and confirmed illicit activities, from the head of the Chicago drug squad. Moved to America in the '50s, spent a lot of dubiously sourced money expanding his chain of cinemas. Suspected of dealing almost every drug American addicts can get their hands on. A wily, careful individual by all accounts. Bankrolled a handful of minor political races in both Chicago and New York. Finally charged, when a box of roma tomatoes coming into one of his restaurants was found to be lined with cocaine, and a sous chef and part-time dealer flipped under interrogation. Nikolić office was searched, and recreational quantities of cocaine were found, as well as several illegal firearms in a panic room.  
  
But, the arrest made the news, ergo, Holden already had it. More interestingly, Chicago PD also has an open file on Slobodan Miljković (son of Jandranka Nikolić, Ivan’s younger sister). Holden couldn’t have accessed that. If Bill gets this damned fax machine working, he’ll have proof of police efficiency to brandish in Holden’s face.  
  
Bill has the fax machine working by the time Holden arrives, but by then it is far too late to harangue anyone at Chicago PD into spending half an hour faxing documents.

The motorcycle is much more subtle than the muffler-free Harleys Bill regularly fumes at, but it's still easy enough to hear arriving in the quiet parking lot. The bike’s headlight flickers off, the heavy front door whines, then Holden walks cautiously into their illuminated office space. He’s in his fur-lined motorcycle jacket still, carrying a large, heavy duty storage tub by the red handles, with several files loose on top of the lid. He sets it down, opens the door, picks it up again.  
  
Both FBI agents turn to receive their arrival. Shades of dissatisfied bosses awaiting an underling, Bill worries.  
  
Holden clears his throat before he crosses the threshold. “Thank you for taking this all so seriously.”  
  
“We take this _very_ seriously,” Jim agrees. There’s a sharp edge to it.  
  
“You brought--” Bill begins.  
  
“The write-up I showed you, yes,” Holden says. He traps the container against his knee, using the freed hand to extend the file towards Bill, at first, then pivoting to Barney instead. “The photos. Everything.”  
  
Jim takes it, and begins flicking through in silence.  
  
Holden seems to be holding his breath.   
  
“Why don’t you, in your own words, explain what you believe is happening, and how this relates to John Doe?” Bill prompts.  
  
Holden sets down the large plastic container on a still-covered desk, and turns around. His hands lace nervously. “Back, about a decade ago, pipeline contract workers were flooding in, and every police force in Alaska was run ragged trying to stop crime getting washed in with them. Police figured most of the contraband was coming in via major shipping ports, so they flew in a whole bunch of drug dogs from-- I think from Border Patrol, down in California, and started running them through arriving shipments.” He seems to bolster as he lays out his theory. “So, you’re an enterprising drug dealer, and suddenly your method of getting drugs into Alaska is compromised. You’re looking for alternatives. Through Canada? Not only is that a hell of a drive, you’re passing through a whole other country on the way up. Border security twice: in, and, out of British Columbia. Fly in? Well, in small quantities, sure. Maybe coke or heroin. But marijuana is bulky,” Holden deliberates, as if he’s discussing industry problems with a couple of big time dealers, instead of two FBI agents. “And besides, airports have security too. You’re trying _not_ to lose shipments to sniffer dogs. So, a new system. Cargo ship brings the drugs up. As it passes the inlet to Kachemak bay, someone on board makes some kind of signal to shore. They lower down the smuggled goods. Someone takes a little boat with a decent outboard across, picks up the drugs, drives back to shore. I saw an icebox go out, probably empty, and come back, probably full. By the time the cargo ship docks in Port Anchorage, gets searched by the port authority, law enforcement, there’s no contraband aboard. It has been driven into the city via Seward Highway.”  
  
“Clever,” Jim says. Bill isn’t sure if that’s directed at Holden, or the drug dealers. “Who owns the dingy?”  
  
“I’m… not sure. There’s a man who rents out all of the boat sheds in that row, he had ‘Dan Mitchelson’ as the current renter. Fake number. So, probably Slobodan.” Holden unzips his jacket. Underneath is a professional white shirt, all but the top button fastened.  
  
“And they make these runs regularly?” Jim follows up.  
  
“...I don’t know yet. I’d need extended observation to determine that. A ship comes past tomorrow. I don’t have the information they have; they’re in contact with someone who tells them when to head down to Homer. They could be making the trip down tomorrow night.”  
  
“When does your schedule end? Bill said you got your hands on two weeks total...”  
  
Holden nods, frowns discontentedly. “Five more days, with two more ships docking in Anchorage. Then we’ll have to resort to a permanent surveillance fixture or get shipping records--”  
  
“When’s the last arrival you have?” Bill interrupts. _I should have thought about this._  
  
“Four days. But the ship passes Homer during the day. ...the one tomorrow night would be a better bet.”  
  
Jim frowns. “Four days isn’t long enough to get this ironclad. We need to arrest them with the drugs on them, as they come back to shore. Otherwise, they can say… you know, we were out fishing, whatever.”  
  
“That only matters if you’re trying to arrest them for drug charges,” Holden dismisses.  
  
“Well, we’re going to need to do that also,” Jim points out, folding his arms.  
  
“After we’ve figured out John Doe,” Bill placates, quickly.  
  
Holden pauses with his mouth open. The argumentative expression softens, but never entirely leaves. “...you should try to get surveillance from tomorrow night. By my measure, they were very low on cocaine. If you’re prosecuting them for their involvement in John Doe’s death, photographic proof taken by someone _reliable_ would be helpful.”  
  
Jim is shaking his head before Holden is even finished. “Tomorrow is _definitely_ too soon. We need to be comprehensive about this. Avoid detection, or we blow the whole thing. ...we’ll figure it out,” he says, not so much reassurance as distancing the official investigation from Holden’s own.  
  
Holden registers that, it seems. He folds back into himself, grows professionally detached. “These are the original documents I obtained, photo negatives, unedited investigative notes,” he tells nobody in particular.  
  
“You’re handing over the originals? That’s very generous,” Bill says before he can help himself.  
  
“They were in a secure storage box. I… believe they’d be safer yet with federal agents,” Holden allows, avoiding Bill’s eyes. “And this is your investigation now, you need primary sources, so to speak.”  
  
_Didn’t want to keep them on the premises in case your ruse was discovered, and they burned your cabin, damning investigation and all, to the fucking ground. So, you did actually register the danger you were putting yourself in._ Bill gives a very severe nod. “We will, yes.”  
  
“...you take a lot of notes, huh,” Jim Barney says, thick with praise. Bill recognises the congratulatory cadence from when they’ve questioned suspects together. “When did you start investigating this?”  
  
If Holden is set on edge by the tone, he hides it well. Holden knows his way around an interrogation, after all. He’s matter-of-fact, bordering on self-confident. “I first suspected heroin use just over two months ago. I was at a club in town-- because of the potential prostitution angle I raised to you at the time-- and one of the bartenders showed clear signs of heroin use. It got me thinking. I realized that, on a corpse as decayed as John Doe’s, track marks could be overlooked. I had the original negatives, and I’d printed the highest quality autopsy photographs I could. ...and, when I looked again, with that potential in mind...” Holden says, leaning down.  
  
“I’ve seen the marks. Nothing definitive,” Bill tells Barney. “But in conjunction to water access off Homer, sure. John Doe could well be a heroin user.”  
  
“And the tattoos,” Holden says quickly. “It’s not just the track marks and--”  
  
“I haven’t seen the tattoos,” Bill points out.  
  
Holden fights back a frown. “Well, I’ve sketched recreations, that’s in the file, you’ve seen them. ...I have no artistic ability, but you can get the feel for shape, style-- similar, is all I’m saying. Look. I can buy a coincidence like this in some big city. If a lot of people are committing crimes, some of them are going to look connected, even though they aren’t. I cannot buy a coincidence like this in Homer.”  
  
Jim Barney seems underwhelmed with the proposed leap of faith. “So, you suspect John Doe is a heroin user. And then, from what Bill says, you took it upon yourself to bring down the local chapter of the Serbian mafia?” he asks, no small hint of irony in his tone.  
  
Holden stops entirely still, a blank and faraway expression forming. Bill has had enough exposure to Holden Ford to recognize the reaction as one of intense annoyance. Holden Ford at his most composed has an incredible capacity for performative ambivalence. It must be a useful survival tactic, in prison. “I was trying to ascertain the identity of John Doe,” Holden corrects politely.  
  
The FBI agent fixes him with a stare for another second, then relents. “Well, we’ll give all this a look through tomorrow. It’s getting late.”  
  
“Of course. Would you like me to come by, again?” Holden says, now wholly emotionally removed.  
  
“I’m sure some interpretation of your notes will be called for,” Jim Barney says levelly. “Is that an inconvenience for you?”  
  
“Not at all,” Holden says, raising up the impression of a smile. It’s an entirely different dynamic to what Bill saw between them outside Barney’s motel room. Holden had been vivid, commanding, and Jim reluctantly impressed. All but equals.  
  
_Well, that’ll happen when you violate someone’s trust, Holden._ _  
_ _  
_ “Take care until then,” Jim dismisses, back to looking through the file.  
  
“You too. The both of you.” Holden glances around the office space again, avoiding eye contact, then leaves. _  
_ _  
_ Bill can’t help but find himself, thoroughly illogically, on Holden’s side. He shuffles over to the delivered trove of documentation, but instead of opening it, he can only toy with the handle. “Shoot. I forgot to ask him where on the Homer Spit those photos were taken,” he mutters, the excuse hollow to his own ears. He doesn’t look over to see if Jim buys it, jogs off for the door.  
  
He catches up with the departing man on the winding tiled path towards the parking lot. Bill slows on the patchy snow, to avoid falling on his ass.  
  
Holden glances over his shoulder with a bemused expression. He sighs silently, turns. “What can I help you with, Special Agent?”  
  
“Drop the attitude with Jim, okay?” Bill mutters. “He has every right to be annoyed you didn’t loop him in on this.”  
  
“I never imagined FBI agents would be so preoccupied with protocol over results. Aren’t you supposed to be the cutting edge in crime solving?”  
  
“You seem to be confusing cutting edge with cutting corners. Protocol is what keeps cases from being thrown out in voir dire. We are aiming to build a legally tenable case right now. That means gathering admissible evidence.”  
  
“Well, let me know when you gather any,” Holden says curtly.  
  
“Tomorrow, I’m getting a file on Dan, straight out of Chicago PD. You know what’s gonna be in that file, other than crimes he’s suspected of in the Windy City? Known associates. You think John Doe got his tattoo in Chicago, right?”  
  
Holden does his best to conceal piqued interest, and fails. “Tomorrow?”  
  
“...thereabouts.”  
  
Holden is placated by this fresh investigative avenue, perhaps in spite of himself. His lips twitch with thought, eyes distant. Then he comes to, and looks Bill directly in the eye. “Did you tell Em to spy on me?”  
  
_Ah. ...shit._ “I told her to--” Bill winces, tries to find a less insulting term, “--keep an eye on you.” _Well, that was still pretty fucking insulting._ _  
_  
“Keep an eye on me, and report back to you, should she have any suspicions. ...explain to me how that differs from spying?”  
  
“I was worried about you for a good reason, Holden.”  
  
Holden breaks eye contact to scowl into the empty expanse of parking lot. “Anything to get to the truth. You and me both, Bill,” he says in carefully selected syllables. “I’ll be by tomorrow, if the weather holds.”  
  
Bill processes the words gradually. “Wait, you’re driving all the way back to Homer? Tonight?”  
  
Holden nods laconically, seeming to square his shoulders to the cold. “I want to go over my materials again, see if I missed anything recent.” He takes one step away, stops. He’s gentler, when he turns. “Are you okay? ...have you spoken to her?”  
  
“I called. She didn’t pick up,” Bill says in a lowered voice. He looks furtively behind; amongst the dark expanse of art deco angles, rustling overgrown hedges, he can see Jim Barney’s illuminated form leaning over the desk.  
  
“Are you doing okay, Bill?” Holden asks, inching reluctantly closer.  
  
“No. Of course not.”

Holden raises a hand, then holds himself back from touch. He appears to select his next words with caution. “...I can’t feel like I’m under surveillance. Having paranoid thought processes confirmed is not psychologically healthy for me.” He takes a deep breath. “I am not a criminal. I’ve spent more than enough of my life being treated like one.”  
  
An affectionate, sympathetic ache has sprung up in Bill’s chest. Any retort about Holden’s behaviour seems petty, even cruel. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Holden blinks, seems surprised to hear so unqualified an apology. “I’m sorry, too. Please take care of yourself,” he advises seriously. The young man zips up his quilted leather jacket all the way up to the high, shearling neckline, then walks purposefully towards his motorbike.  
  
Bill picks his way back inside through the glacial flow of covered furniture, past the brown-tinted glass into the back conference room.  
  
“Now I’m starting to see what that reaction was for,” Jim Barney says without looking. His hand is steadying Holden’s surveillance photos he’s putting up on a corkboard.  
  
“...pardon?”  
  
“You got nervous, when I mentioned him. In that graveyard, remember? I mean, you warned me he’d flout procedure-- I can’t say you didn’t warn me-- but the scope…” Jim is spacey with amazement. “Well. We’ll have to insulate the Bureau from potential blowback, obviously.”  
  
“Our priority has to be solving the case, not covering our asses.”  
  
“Bill, _this_ isn’t the case,” Barney says, gesturing to the photos. “This is a drug smuggling operation.”  
  
“That’s related. Tell me it’s not related. Heroin addict ends up dead where a bunch of dealers are launching their boat?”  
  
“Sure, it’s related. If we figure out who John Doe is, but blow the parallel drug smuggling case in the process, we have let criminals off the hook. Do you want to be explaining that to Anchorage PD? To Shepard? When the DEA starts making noise about not getting control of this operation from the get-go?” Jim Barney finally turns. His gaze is steady and serious. Bill is, technically, Jim’s boss, but the language is unapologetically direct. “We’re going to have to be careful. And we have to make sure it’s us doing the investigating from here on in. This is dangerous. Mr. Ford could have got himself killed, tailing criminals of this calibre.”  
  
_And you’re only getting the watered down version._ Bill nods gravely, but something still drives him to defend Holden. “Is there any other way this case gets solved? I’m serious. Any other option available to him, that gets this case solved. Would we have got involved? Over track marks that may or may not be visible in that autopsy photo?”  
  
“Maybe not. But we’re involved now, so we have to get guarantees that he isn’t in the field doing any more digging. ...we’ll have to inform Tom Curley, too. This is a federal investigation, and that should be enough to stop them kicking doors down and making arrests before we have a solid case built up. ...Holden Ford is not going to be a popular man over at Anchorage PD once they find out he’s been keeping evidence of a drug smuggling ring from them.”  
  
“He’s had practise fending off police with a vendetta.” Bill steps forward to hand Jim Barney the next photograph in sequence. “...how do we do this?”  
  
“Well. Ignoring provenance-- not ignoring, per se, but putting aside provenance-- what we have here is not an investigation. Not in any legal sense,” Jim says. He rubs his lower lip thoughtfully as he stares at the nighttime surveillance photographs. “Holden’s right about not being perceived as reliable. Our own surveillance photos would be useful, if only to put up onto slides for a court exhibit in the Doe case. Their lawyer would have a field day with Holden’s past if we use any materials from his private investigation.”  
  
Bill nods. Holden even said it himself, albeit drenched in passive-aggression. _Did I use the term ‘reliable’ in that phonecall with Em? Did she tell Holden about that too?_ “You’re right. We treat this as a tip off. A very, uh, reliable tip off, with a great deal more detail than we’d normally hope for.”  
  
“We can get records from the local port authority, though we should be careful. Everyone’s friendly in towns like this, we don’t want it getting back to Bodrazic. We coordinate, get a team to photograph these two leaving the residence that they deal out of. We get a photo of them at the boat ramp in Homer. Six years gone or not, we should run forensics over that dingy they’re using. We start looking at missing persons reports from six years ago that were filed in Chicago-- maybe the entire midwest. New York and Miami too. I think John Doe was close to them. Family, maybe.”  
  
“Funny way to treat family,” Bill says airily. “So, you think he fell overboard? Back to accidental drowning, after all?”  
  
Jim smiles only in the corner of his mouth, sobers up as he turns back to the write-up on Slobodan that he’s thumb-tacking up. “Holden’s right about the missing tattoo. I talked to a forensics guy at the Bureau. Skin doesn’t slough off so neatly, not in those conditions. Especially not when there’s tight fabric compacting it. If someone cut a tattoo off him, we can effectively rule out an accidental death. John Doe was dumped fully dressed; that means they took off his shirt, cut the tattoo off, put the shirt back on. Why go to such lengths? Moreover, how do they know there’s a tattoo there at all? Family explains that. They knew where the tattoo was, and they understood that it would signal his identity one way or another.”  
  
“Close acquaintance explains that,” Bill equivocates. Plenty of other ways a tattoo could be seen. “...a name? Or, in ...Serbian? ..Yugoslavian? ...a non-English language?”  
  
Jim nods thoughtfully. “The tattoo could have been in the Cyrillic alphabet. They only cut off the one, after all. Left the eagle, the ‘B’. This was a specific concern.”  
  
“Holden might have a hunch,” Bill says, reaching to pry open the box of firsthand evidence.  
  
“I would be shocked if he didn’t,” Jim murmurs as he finishes tacking up Holden’s research. Now, it sounds close to praise. The next words confirm it: “...he’s done something incredible here.”  
  
“Yeah? You seemed ...unimpressed with his conduct, if you don’t mind me saying.”  
  
“Well, obviously, I should have been involved in this,” Jim mutters. Bill wonders if he, perhaps, hears hurt pride. Maybe just hurt feelings. Jim Barney, perhaps more than any FBI agent Bill knows, seems to relish the slivers of subterfuge involved in even humdrum investigations; in all likelihood, he would have been thrilled to be Holden’s investigative partner.  
  
Bill has the lid off the black plastic tub now. His fingers trip across the spiral-bound notebooks, upright beside film cannisters and a stack of document wallets. He selects a notebook at random, flips it open halfway through. He’s met with a dated entry describing a heroin user, presumably deemed unrelated post hoc. An exhaustive physical description, a litany of biographic information. Holden is good at this, good at coaxing secrets out of people, compiling them into something meaningful.  
  
_I should tell him that more often. How much I admire him. How grateful I am he’s doing this selflessly, instead of trying to sell this story to the New York Times. I should tell him…_

Bill can’t think that, not in such proximity to his work, to a colleague. Tomorrow, he tells himself.  
  
Tomorrow comes, and Bill thinks maybe he has the words, finally. It doesn’t matter. As is becoming routine, Holden doesn’t show up.


	8. Chapter 8

“No snow last night,” Bill comments as he checks his watch for the hundredth time. “And he’s not here.”  
  
“Did it snow down in Homer?” Jim asks, an entirely sensible line of inquiry that hadn’t quite occurred to Bill. “He rents a cabin down there, he told me. Might have driven back home last night.” Barney shrugs, going back to what must be his fifth cup of coffee.  
  
Bill hums reticently. He should keep his thoughts on Holden to himself, or else his constant redirection of the conversation will be too revealing.  
  
He doesn’t need Holden for this leg of the investigation, anyway. This is when the legitimacy of an FBI badge pays dividends. No clever gambits, no cloak and dagger research, no wheedling with law enforcement. Bill calls, announces his title, asks his questions and gets his answers.  
  
Rise, and repeat. Rinse, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat.  
  
The hours of the day are cluttered with paperwork, punctuated unpredictably with returned phone calls. The jittery, barely-functioning fax machine’s mechanical trilling and clicking becomes unobtrusive background noise. The file comes from Chicago PD, and while Slobodan Miljković clearly constituted a minor player in the ‘72 investigation, there’s several pages of background on him: born in 1940, dual citizenship on his mother’s side but never lived outside of America. Bounced around some awful suburbs in the greater New York area, ended up in an equally awful suburb in Chicago slinging coke for his uncle. One arrest for possession, his expensive lawyer sorted out a plea deal and Dan served no time. Another arrest made, charges dropped. This one, a domestic. Girlfriend, who landed in a hospital bed, went down into the station a week later to say her injuries came from a drunken fall.  
  
So, Miljković is capable of violence. John Doe didn’t appear to have died a violent death; no broken bones, no missing teeth or fingernails, no defensive wounds. Bill will need to follow-up with a coroner to get an idea of whether bruises can be seen after that degree of decay.  
  
Bill writes the name of every known associate out in black sharpie, pins them to a wall, gets into follow-up calls to make sure missing persons haven’t been filed for any of the men Miljković knew in Chicago. For the Americans, a simple, if laborious, process. Tracking down the four foreign nationals is a more daunting task. Bill might have to find an intermediary to contact the police departments within a Socialist regime. Make sure he doesn’t accidentally violate any federal laws.  
  
Bill’s names go up one by one until they dominates one wall of the conference room. ‘Dragutin’ is not amongst them, but Bill hasn’t discounted use of a fake name. The satisfaction of having Dan’s file will have to suffice for now. ...Holden should be here to gloat alongside him, but the young man still hasn’t shown up. At four PM, Jim Barney excuses himself to man the ineffectual coffee shop surveillance perch. Bill sees him off, sits out front staring at the old, muddied snow in the parking lot. Holden could have made it here. _Does he not want to see me?_  
  
The sun is setting and cloud cover has abated over downtown Anchorage. The sky is a rich and threatening red. Bill gets through most of one unsatisfying cigarette before a paranoid thought occurs. A shipment was potentially coming in tonight. Holden could be having doubts about the efficacy of his official FBI investigation.  
  
The sun withdraws so fast it seems to be fleeing, stealing back warm tones from the reflective expanses of shopfront and from the convexities of the art deco facade Bill is slouched beneath. His cigarette is done and cold and he doesn’t go inside.  
  
He’s supposed to call Nancy again. ‘Supposed to’ as in, that is what Bill believes a decent man would do. Keep calling a phone that never gets answered. Keep away from that endlessly exhilarating boy.  
  
Holden’s consecutive no-show eats at Bill like cancer consumes healthy flesh. He lights another cigarette, extinguishes it indecisively, puts it back in the packet charred end and all. _Holden isn’t that reckless. Surely.  
  
_He’s being a suspicious bastard, he knows. Exactly what the boy took umbrage at.  
  
But being a suspicious bastard has paid off a little too recently for Bill to have ingrained better habits. He locks up the mostly empty federal building and jogs to his truck.

  
  
Bill doesn’t have the radio on now as he drives. His sole entertainment and company is the perpetually forward-stretching black road, crisscrossing timidly away from each oncoming white slope. He steers alternately through furrowed, patchy white and huge cleared tracts where a snow plough cut through a drift. He passes a handful of cars, two trucks heading back in the direction of Anchorage. The second truck is emblazoned with ‘Kachemak Bay Fishery Company’. No motorbikes pass. That would have been too easy, Bill broods.  
  
It is dark by the time he reaches Homer, the sort of Christmas card darkness that makes every nestled shopfront and high, pin-pricks of cold-proof windows seem delightfully welcoming. Perhaps that’s only when contrasted to the inhospitable blue-black surrounding. The glimmering protection of the township seems an insult to the gargantuan winter weather patterns overhead. There’s no storm in Homer tonight; snow is falling gradually, feather light yet inescapable.  
  
Bill drives through the twinkling town and right past the turn off to the spit. The highway has been recently ploughed, but whether today or yesterday he’s unsure. Miniature white cliff faces hedge him as he rounds the highway towards Holden’s cabin. He hauls his truck up the driveway cautiously, through the already filling-in indents of Holden’s shovelling efforts. Maybe it snowed down in Homer today, Bill tells himself. Maybe Holden was stuck inside.  
  
But there’s no light at all filtering through the tiny, front-facing windows.  
  
Bill steps out of his car and into the picturesque drift of snow flakes. No smoke from the chimney, either. No rustle of movement within. The little red cabin is as deathly silent as any one of the spirit houses. A grave that is a little less apparent at first.  
  
Bill fumbles his way up the front stairs by the distant streetlight and no more, bangs on the door with a closed fist. He waits most of a minute, tries again, harder.  
  
“Holden. If you’re in there, open up.” Bill waits a beat, tries again. “I’m making sure you’re not doing any more private investigating. So if you’re here, come on out and call me an asshole for suspecting you of irresponsibility. ...please.”  
  
The silence answers.  
  
Bill carefully descends the steps, checks the tarp he’s seen tucked into the underneath the cabin. The first tarp covers a firewood pile. The second one is half-folded, half crumpled, nothing beneath. No motorcycle.  
  
Bill marches back to his car. He’s abruptly furious, even without his suspicions fully confirmed. His hand is shaking enough that he struggles to get the key into the ignition, and it has nothing to do with the Alaskan cold.  
  
He speeds back to Homer and to the turn off overlooking the spit. He parks his truck, switches off the headlights, and squints down curved line of streetlights and out into the abyssal beyond.  
  
The night air is still, but the ocean is a mess of movement. Streetlights on the spit brush white foam from the repetitive arrival of deep water swell, pulling itself up heaving onto the shore like a procession of fanatical infantry, smashing themselves into oblivion as they attempt to regain ceded territory.  
  
The spit is long (Bill vaguely recalls Curley once saying it was more than four miles) and the lights at the built up, distant end are impossible to differentiate even from the elevated viewpoint. A mass of flickering, formless yellow and white barely surfacing above the bay. Bill zips the parka up, steps out into the snow. Headed where, he’s not sure. He can’t see a motorcycle around, assumes Holden will have concealed it wherever he’s set up his surveillance station. ...there were those boatsheds, only part of the way down the spit. Bill can approximate the location he spotted yesterday afternoon, but there’s no lights there. _I should have actually asked Holden where the photographs were taken, when I lied to Jim about it._ _  
_ _  
_ No lights means no drug dealers. Yet. Bill swears softly to himself, then sets off down toward the water edge.  
  
He peels off from the road and the revealing streetlights. The spit is ringed about with shale-like beaches of dark greys, grimy and wet and unsteady.  
  
The last time Bill was creeping through darkness in search of Holden Ford, it was in a remote Wisconsin forest. Then, Holden had been in much more immediate danger, and Bill had been nothing but sympathetic. Now, Bill’s predominant emotion is hotheaded frustration. He stumbles once into shallow, sandy water, curses under his breath.  
  
The spit is even longer than it looked from shore. The smear of gravel continues lightlessly into the night. The pebbles shift and tinkle with retracting waves, and Bill can’t see to put his feet somewhere solid. He calms as he walks, hands jammed in the pockets of his parka. There’s a degree of nonchalance for his own life without any family to tether it to, but it doesn’t extend to blowing a murder investigation, or giving away Holden’s position and leaving him exposed and endangered.  
  
Perhaps fifteen minutes into his cautious advance, he begins to make out the line of blue, aluminium boat sheds. There’s a turn off from the main road of the spit, ending a hundred odd feet away from the road in an aged wooden pier and newer concrete reinforcement around a boat ramp. The only illumination is the scant overflow from the streetlights. The nighttime surveillance didn’t show colour, and the background was vague behind torchlights; Bill isn’t certain this is the right boat ramp and boat shed.  
  
On the other hand, there’s nothing to rule it out. Bill is used to due diligence as a detective. _Eliminate the possibility and move on._  
  
He follows the water line around then crouches unprotected on slippery gravel about thirty feet from the boatshed. It appears to be the only structure within several hundred feet. Where the fuck would someone set up with a long range camera and-- Bill sees a glint of something and freezes. There’s a car parked on the far side of the boatshed, largely concealed from Bill’s angle of approach. A metallic red Dodge. Coronet, Bill’s almost certain, judging by the sharp right angles of the bonnet. Flashy but not expensive. Not your regular fisherman’s beat-to-hell pickup. The headlights are off, and there doesn’t look to be anyone inside the front seats, but Bill isn’t going any close to find out. He can’t recall if he saw that specific vehicle in the parking lot at ‘Tenth Avenue Manor’. He doesn’t need a definitive answer on that either; he needs to get the fuck out of here.  
  
His boots sound even louder on the gravel as he backs up one step, two, watching the car. On the third backtracking step, there’s a click, and suddenly he faces a blinding flood of white, splitting the night down the middle. Bill hadn’t thought about how the huge parka would prevent him from drawing his weapon in a hurry. He can’t see beyond the light, so he errs on the side of caution. No sudden moves.  
  
“Hands up. Who the fuck is that?” comes a voice. A figure straightens up, emerging from an alley between boat sheds.  
  
It steps forward into the diffused light and is no longer ambiguous silhouette; a man in a slouchy, deep red, wannabe-rockstar leather jacket, thick black sweatpants, hair so bright blonde it may well be dyed. His eyes are narrowed, thick lashes flickering as his eyes dart suspicious. A walkie-talkie clipped to his belt that Bill didn’t see in the surveillance photos. Dan Whatever-The-Fuck-He’s-Going-By-Today.  
  
His big hands are wrapped around something dark, and very small. For a moment, Bill thinks he’s being John Dillinger’d-- that he’s looking at a piece of fishing equipment masquerading as a handgun-- and then Slobodan Miljković steps forward and the light glints off the muzzle of the pistol. A tiny little thing. A Beretta, maybe. Something a Bond villain would draw from an ankle holster beneath a tailored charcoal suit.  
  
“Raise your hands. _Now_ ,” the tall man says. His accent is all but inaudible. The pseudonym Dan Mitchelson makes a lot more sense immediately.  
  
Bill swears under his breath and raises his hands, fingers splayed.  
  
“My dog ran off--” Bill begins to lie. It’s all he gets out. There’s a scuffling behind. Something ferocious hits the base of his skull, just above his spine. Feels like Babe Ruth has teeing off on his head. Bill feels his knees give out, and then feels nothing at all.

  
  
Bill comes to, bleary and confused. He’s rolled on his front clumsily splayed. His skull feels blackly hollow. Emptied of any conscious thought and awash with sloshing, disorienting pain. He rests forward-- his brow hurts too, but fully fleshed out, physically acute-- and he tries to recall how he came to be where he is, in such terrible pain. His lips are open on gravel that tastes of saline and kelp. The cold aching up from below, battering him wet with the ocean spray, is almost a relief. Ice to a wound. His whole head feels like a wound. He can only see out of one eye without moving, and he furtively takes in what he can.  
  
His circumstances unwelcomely avail themselves.  
  
He was searching for Holden. A man was pointing a gun at him. Slobodan, the heroin dealer and possible murderer. Someone knocked him out cold.  
  
Bill struggles to get his bearings, with cloying darkness and the translucency of recent head trauma. Best he can tell, he’s lying astride the concrete ramp leading into the churning Kachemak bay, wedged into the shadow of the darkest, waterside boat shed. There’s movement further behind the boat sheds. The heavy duty, one direction electric lantern is turned against a wall beside him. Looks like something the navy would use to send morse code. That might be the method of communication with the incoming cargo ship. He can't turn enough to see the two men, but can hear snippets of low conversation amidst crunching, gurgling waves dragging at the gravel edges of the boat ramp. Bill's coat is opened and he is flush to melted snow coming through his dress shirt, scorchingly cold concrete. He can feel something around his wrists-- rope of some sort, he's sure. Bill doesn’t turn to look towards the discreet discussion going on beside him; he plays possum, tries to creep the hands caught under his chest down, down, towards his holster. He gets there slowly. The holster is emptied in advance of his exploration. ...explains the unzipped parka.  
  
Bill breathes in against the salty damp concrete, then out. Panic does not set in; it is only his own life in danger. The pain in his head abates enough to take stock of his predicament.  
  
They definitely have a gun-- no, two guns, including his-- and he is unarmed. Even if both men are truly abysmal shots, Bill won’t get far back towards his car. An empty stretch of barren, black spit might as well be a rifle range. His only other option is swimming. Wouldn’t get far into the water with his hands tied, and two men unloading clips after him. ...especially water this cold, he reminds himself.  
  
He turns his head only a fraction, and tries to decipher the low conversation. At first, it is so unintelligible that Bill worries he has a cranial bleed in a cerebral language center-- then, he realizes, he’s hearing an unfamiliar language punctuated with English. Dan is leading the conversation, seems to trip over whatever he’s speaking, and continuously reverts to English words.  
  
“--you know. CPR,” he says frustratedly, between choppy, unrecognizable syllables. “Pump his chest-- water goes in, you pour it in his mouth. Not like last time.” A few words are stolen by a particularly heavy wave. “Falls. Hits his head. We dump him back near Anchorage, find his car, park that nearby.”  
  
Dragutin replies in Yugoslavian.  
  
Dan takes a long, hesitating time to respond to that. He tries in another language, struggles, reverts to English once more. “FBI is-- no, that’s CIA, this isn’t-- this isn’t like a spy or--”  
  
There’s more back and forth that Bill cannot understand. Then, “--they thought Alex drowned, didn’t they?” from Dan. “And we’ll stage it better.” 

_Alex._ Bill realises he’s read something close to that earlier in the day. _Aleksander… Merj--something?_ One of the foreign nationals. All of the consonant laden surnames blur together. It doesn’t matter. Jim or Holden will follow up on the Chicago PD file without him in the picture. Holden will be entirely vindicated. Probably won’t see a whole lot of joy in that, with Bill ending up floating in Kachemak Bay too.  
  
Bill squints towards the distant, populated end of the spit. Could be someone would hear, if he started yelling blue murder and made a break for it. There’s a mirage dance to the lights around the distant marina, the scattering of low, lit buildings. More than a mile away. _...maybe someone drives past. That’s the opportunity, then. Run for the headlights, hope these two don’t follow._ _  
_  
But Bill doesn’t get advance warning of an arrival. All he hears is a rush of crunching footsteps, and the last voice in the world he wants to hear right now: Holden Ford’s.  
  
“Dan. Dragutin,” comes a breathless greeting from nowhere. Bill shuffles his head over to watch the young man emerging-- not from the road, but from the dark stretch of awash gravel that passes for shoreline that Bill himself trod. Now Holden steps right into the fluorescent green-white light of the signal lantern. “Jesus, I finally-- I finally found you. We need to talk.”  
  
Bill’s panic arrives all at once.  
  
“What the fuck?” Dan growls. “Shit, is he awake?” Bill realizes he’s being observed, and goes corpse still.  
  
He hears footsteps, then is greeted by his own gun. “I’m awake,” he confirms. He’s not sure what good the lie would do now. He can’t make a break for it and leave Holden behind. The FBI agent pushes himself upright slowly, leans back against the boatshed. His shirt and undershirt are wet through in an elongated splotch over his heart and liver, and now he can see the blue plastic rope looped several times, knotted tight but inelegantly around his wrists.  
  
Dragutin-- it must be, even with the indistinctness of Holden’s surveillance photos-- blinks and draws back. He’s buttoned into a hefty wool overcoat, open at the hips reveal a matching walkie-talkie, and a pair of small binoculars also clipped to his belt. They set a watch, then. Holden didn’t mention that, but why should he? Bill wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the Homer Spit.  
  
Dragutin is a stockier build and much shorter than Slobodan, dark-haired with a stubbly beard coming in. Doesn’t look as if he’d hit like a charging bull, but he certainly did. Bill can’t see the cudgel anywhere. A pipe, maybe. A crowbar, perhaps. There’s a few pimples around Dragutin’s jawline, and an employment-prospect-destroyer blue ink tattoo emerging from his neckline. Bill is surprised by how young Dragutin is, but then again, slinging drugs isn’t an old man’s game. There’s something nearly apologetic in the dark brown eyes, but any such sentiment is tarnished by the fact that he’s still aiming Bill’s own FBI issued Smith and Wesson down.  
  
Holden is also facing a firearm, this one in the hands of Dan Miljković.  
  
“Hands up. ...on your knees,” Dan orders, in Holden’s direction. He’s worryingly calm, the harsh edge in his voice anger rather than panic.  
  
“I’m not armed,” Holden reassures as he sinks down into the thin, salt-stripped snowdrift. The blue eyes are junkie wide in the lantern light.  
  
“You know the cop?”  
  
“He’s my father,” Holden lies without a millisecond of indecision.  
  
“He’s FBI, Colton,” Dragutin says, looking over. “We saw his badge.”  
  
“Yeah, he’s an FBI agent. He works at Quantico. It’s my dad, I’m telling you.”  
  
“Your _dad_ is FBI?” Dragutin asks, something like impressed.  
  
Dan, not so much. “You said your last name was Miller. You told me that. You give me a fake fucking name then, or are you lying to me now?” Before Holden can respond, the broad-shouldered blond has him by lapel. The gun nudges against Holden’s brow. “Did you lie to me?”  
  
“A fake name, it’s not-- I mean, it’s not really a lie. Not to you specifically. I have to use it all the time, Dan, he’s been looking for me--” Holden’s excuses are cut short by the butt of the little pistol. It crunches across his upturned features, sends the young man sprawling down onto one hand leather gloved hand.  
  
“I don’t like being lied to,” Dan tells him. "You rat fuck."  
  
Holden pulls right back up like a battle-hardened boxer, unfazed by a blow that should have staggered him. Taken worse beatings, no doubt. His nose doesn’t have any obvious new notches, but both nostrils are ringed with red. He raises his hands again. “I’m sorry. I had no choice, okay?” he begins. “I--”  
  
“His name is Holden. Holden Tench,” Bill interrupts. Anything to draw focus. The name slips off his tongue a little too easily. “He’s-- he’s who I was following you all looking for. He’s my son.”  
  
“That doesn’t explain a fucking thing,” Dan retorts. “Keep your gun on him,” he snaps to Dragutin, zipping Holden’s jacket open, patting down his waistband and then his hips. “You move an inch and I’ll blow his fucking head off,” he adds, in Bill’s direction. He pulls a set of keys from Holden’s jacket, then a wallet; pockets both. “How the fuck did you find us? You police too?”  
  
“No. I followed you here from Anchorage,” Holden says. A heavy nosebleed has begun, dribbling from his left nostril and pooling in the divot above his lips. As he speaks, blood descends to pop and bubble with each pleaded word. “Well, I followed him. Let me-- let me explain. Please.”  
  
“Oh, you’re going to fucking explain yourself,” Miljković says.  
  
Holden treats the barely veiled threat more like instruction. “When your street is busy, you know, people coming home from work, I park the bike a block away and walk.” The neatness, crispness, superiority is stripped off his tongue as if he took a razor to it. _Is this Holden’s prison persona? ...did he ever have that capacity for self-preservation?_ “If the same bike arrives and leaves all the time, people are going to ask questions. Last thing I need is some concerned neighbour writing down my license plate. I came over after work to buy, parked down the street. I was walking towards your apartment, and I saw him, smoking, in a parked car. He’s tracked me down before-- hauled me to rehab one time-- basically blackmailed me--”  
  
“So why didn’t you fucking warn us?” Dragutin asks. His accent is thicker, monotonal and throaty. Through it, he sounds genuinely hurt. A good actor, or an easy mark.  
  
“He’s FBI. They tap phones all the time. If I called, and he heard my voice, I’d be confirming his suspicions. I’d never get rid of him. I hid behind a dumpster, and the moment he left I would have warned you, okay? I would have. That’s how I saw him follow you off, because I stayed to warn you,” Holden assures both armed men.  
  
“How did he find us? Huh?” Dan asks. “Why the fuck is he looking for you _here_?”  
  
“I-- I don’t know--” Holden starts, eyes darting back to where Bill is slumped against the boatshed.  
  
Dan is already crossing the distance. The tiny gun comes up again. “Why were you outside my apartment?” he asks, squatting down.  
  
Careless, to point a gun so close to someone’s face. If Bill wasn’t so sluggish from his head injury, he might be able get the gun away from him. But there’s another armed man behind Dan to consider. Dragutin has turned his weapon somewhat reluctantly towards Holden.  
  
“I was looking for him. Looking for Holden,” Bill says. The name sounds preposterously fake as he honestly utters it. _I could have just assigned Holden a normal given name. Tim. Ryan. John._  
  
Holden nods along, frantic but repressed. “Holden Tench. ...I can prove it. My real name is on my passport. And I have my real ID, I have-- I probably have it on a luggage tag or--”  
  
“Search him,” Dan almost orders, gesturing Dragutin over to the kneeling man.  
  
“Not _on_ me,” Holden protests, as he’s being patted more thoroughly.  
  
Dragutin takes Holden's wallet from Dan, and flicks through the cards within. “This has your name on it, Colton,” he mutters.  
  
Holden is shaking his head and spilling blood with every jerk of movement. “That driver’s license is fake. I didn’t want my father-- I didn’t want _him_ finding me because I got pulled over for speeding. It’s fake. The lettering is a little off--”  
  
“Colton R. Miller,” Dragutin reads slowly. He holds it up to the lantern, stares a few seconds, then removes his own wallet. “...it looks a little wrong,” he says, indecisively, as he compares the two.  
  
Dan marches over, snatching the paper ID. “...keep your gun on the Fed, idiot.” He studies it, then nods. “It’s a fake, alright. The typesetting is all wrong. This is dog shit, Colton-- Holden.” He holds it up, beside Holden’s cheek. His gun raises, flicking between the photo ID and the man pictured in it. “New York? You said you were from Philadelphia--”  
  
“I’ve lived there. I grew up, and most recently lived in Virginia. That’s where my Father-- where he works. At Quantico. ...the guy who made me the license, he said New York was better. Out of state. People were less likely to recognise it, and notice inconsistencies.” Holden remains an elegant, earnest liar. His nosebleed seems to be clotting, or perhaps his blood flow is sluggish with the cold. “...though, I guess that reasoning made more sense in Virginia, where I bought it. Fifty bucks for that piece of shit, can you believe? I was desperate at the time.”  
  
“The ID says you’re…” Dan trails off, lips twitching in arithmetic. “Thirty one,” he concludes. His eyes flit back towards Bill. Finally, the age question.  
  
Holden doesn’t flinch at the discrepancy. “I wanted to be as far away from a description of me my dad might give. ...I figured I could pass as a thirty something. And my dad would be looking for someone younger, so--”  
  
“You don’t pass as that,” Dan retorts quickly. “You look like a kid. I figured you were Dragutin’s age. Twenty five, twenty six?”  
  
Holden bows his head into a nod. Finally, he wipes his nose on his forearm. It leaves the lower half of his face smeared.  
  
Dan looks at the license again, grunts what sounds like disapproval. At the forgery rather than at Holden, Bill hopes. “Where’s the passport?” he asks, gun lowering.  
  
Relief floods Bill head to toe, like oxygen returning after asphyxiation. Alongside it is ill-timed annoyance at Holden for procuring false identification. Another criminal act on the tally. _Something to worry about later. ...if there is a later._  
  
“At my apartment,” Holden answers, then grimacing, “...back in town.”  
  
“In Anchorage? ...fuck,” Dan curses again. He puts Holden’s fake ID into the pocket of his baggy ski jacket. He comes out with something dark. Folded. _...my fucking badge._ “You say he’s your father. Prove it. What’s his name? His full name.”  
  
“Special Agent William Tench. William Edward Tench,” Holden recites. “I don’t know if his badge has the full name, but it might be on his license. You could check that, if you have his wallet.”  
  
Bill tries not to show his surprise. _How the fuck do you know my middle name, boy?_  
  
Dan removes Bill’s wallet too, squatting close to the highly directional battery powered lantern.  
  
“I know his address, too, I could--” Holden begins.  
  
“Address is too easy,” Dan huffs. “If you’re FBI, and you work with him, you could know his address. ...his birthday.”  
  
Holden winces in a way that doesn’t appear to have much to do with his busted nose. “It’s ...it’s June. June the, uh, hang on.”  
  
“Pretty shitty son,” Dan derides. The deceptively dangerous little firearm threatens in Holden’s direction once more. “You don’t know your father’s--”  
  
“June the twenty-fifth,” Holden interrupts. He looks up, blue eyes caught across by the lantern light, alight with victory. The front-of-the-class teacher’s pet who earned a full ride to University of Wisconsin briefly reveals himself. Then Holden remembers, and fades himself back to mundanity.  
  
In less perilous circumstances, Bill would have some opinions about Holden’s immaculate internal dossier on his biographical details.  
  
Dan puts the wallet away. There’s a reluctant belief in his eyes. His blonde hair keeps getting dragged by the eddying wind, falling into his face. Hard to get a read on his expression. He seems to remember Bill is still alive, turns back his way. “How did you-- okay, so, how did you find Colton?”  
  
Bill wishes he’d had more than a few shuddering breaths to iron out his story. “I had him as far as Seattle. He took off with a lot of money. Money from the bank account I share with my wife. He overdosed, landed up in hospital with nowhere to go. We… checked him into rehab. When he came out we let him stay in his old room. Stayed one night. Very next morning, he stole my wife’s checkbook, all the petty cash we had around the house, and he took off. I tracked him as far as Seattle, where he cashed the cheque. Stole right out of our account, after we’d paid for _weeks_ of rehab.”  
  
“Banks pay it back, if it’s a forged signature,” Holden scoffs. “I didn’t steal from _you_.”  
  
“If I told them it was forged, you’d be looking at prison time, boy,” Bill growls. Easy enough to pretend to lay into Holden like this. Had more than a couple of dress rehearsals.  
  
“Keep it down!” Dan snaps, brandishing his gun. “Don’t talk to him. How did you find him after that? Why were you at my apartment?” he asks, much quieter. More of a hiss. Barely any accent to speak of.  
  
“I put out an APB on him. Said he was a POI in a case I was working. When that didn’t turn up anything in the next couple of days, I called every drug squad in every city that flights had been going to,” Bill explains in a low voice. “Even called the Canadians, though I figured he’d be scared to use his passport with me looking for him. Sent out his description, photos. Let them know that he’d be buying heroin. Some leads, none good. Then, a week ago, Anchorage PD sent me a surveillance photo of him scoring. Outside that apartment building I was watching today.”  
  
“....police are watching my apartment?” Dan asks in a slow, shocked tone.  
  
“They have you connected to drug runners out of Florida. There’s some DEA agent up in Alaska supervising,” Bill says with an uninterested shrug. “You boys should get out of town, and fast. They like you for potential snitches, I think. You haven’t done any time, you’re young, you’re connected, but not too connected. Good profile for a star witness.”  
  
“We’re not fucking snitches,” Dan retorts abruptly, forgetting his own rule about lowered voices.  
  
“So you… followed us all this way to, what, arrest us?” Dragutin asks much more quietly. He doesn’t seem particularly thrown by this revelation. An unmoving nervous unhappiness is still plastered across his features.  
  
“I wasn’t going to arrest you,” Bill replies, turning to address the shorter man. “...I was… ah, going to cut a deal. You tell me where Holden is, I tell you how to stay out of prison. Figured an FBI agent flashing a badge would scare you shitless, get you talking. I was going to wait til you left your apartment, because I’m not sure if it’s under current surveillance. Wouldn’t risk some local boy catching me blowing a federal investigation to find my deadbeat son, you know?”  
  
Dragutin frowns in confusion. The brows are wiry, dark, heavy over his eyes. “So you wanted to arrest Colton--ah, my bad, Holden?”  
  
“If I didn’t find him, he’d end up choking on his own vomit in some miserable motel room, like he did… eighteen months ago. And this time, maybe nobody finds him and gets him to ICU in time.” There’s some real feeling in that comment. “I wasn’t going to arrest him. I was going to check him into rehab. Make sure it stuck, this time.”  
  
Dan laughs cruelly. “You think you’re gonna talk him out of his habit? You stupid fuck. ‘Colton’ is one of our most loyal customers.”  
  
“I wasn’t planning on just talking to him,” Bill mutters. “Gonna thrash the fear of God back into him first.”  
  
Holden’s head has dropped. He’s staring at the snow by his knees, or rather, the collecting dark droplets marring the white.  
  
“And you-- Holden, I mean-- how did you find us down here? _Why_ are you here?” Dan asks, snapping his free hand to regain Holden’s waning attention.  
  
The young man looks up with very wide, watering eyes. His voice is thinner, younger. “I knew… I knew he would have a gun, you would have a gun. He’s my dad, I couldn’t-- couldn’t let him get shot. I didn’t want you two getting shot, either. You’re my friends, you know? You’ve been good to me.”  
  
Dan scoffs, but doesn’t interrupt.  
  
“You took off and he followed you. I followed through the city. From a distance. He was driving this big truck, so, pretty easy to spot. It was busy enough that I figured I could tail him without being obvious. But you guys all went further south so I had to slow down, because there was no traffic any more to hide in. I went down Seward Highway… a long way. A long, long way. Thought maybe I’d lost all of you. But the snow was falling, and there was only one fresh set of truck tire marks. I followed them all the way here. Found the red truck parked beside the road, and I followed his footprints,” Holden explains. Not ‘explains’, Bill remembers. ‘Lies through his teeth’.  
  
...maybe some hint of the truth. Holden must have seen his tire marks leading up to the cabin; why else would he end up at the Homer Spit, on his knees, with a gun in his face?  
  
Holden gestures vaguely back towards Homer, down the narrow strip of salty black bitumen. There’s a dusting of struggling white bouncing back the street lights. “Probably the exact same way he found you. Hard to sneak around when it’s snowing, you know.”  
  
Bill can’t see Dan’s face, but he can hear the scowl: “Sound like you got a lot of practice at solving shit, Colton. Looking for clues. Like a _cop_ would have a lot of practice.”  
  
“Dan, If I was a cop-- or a Fed like him-- why the fuck would I come here without back-up? Without a gun?” Holden asks, staring up. His nosebleed has tumbled over his lips again now that he’s speaking animatedly; Holden has yet to wipe away the glossy rivulets. Yet, the young man seems oddly level. Maybe his raised hands tremble in their leather gloves. Hard to see precisely. “Come on. Dan, you know me.”  
  
“I _know_ you lied to me. That’s all I know,” Dan retorts, lurching forward. The firearm is aimed, point blank, at Holden’s forehead.  
  
Bill momentarily considers diving for the tall blond. Dragging him down. Taking his chances with two loaded firearms.  
  
Dragutin speaks before he’s made a decision: “He’s not a cop.” The Yugoslavian is nervously pacing, the heavy silver handgun dangling in his grip. He’s a stocky build, thick neck, large wrists, but nevertheless the gun seems too heavy for him to hold upright. It dangles benignly, finger not even on the trigger. “He’s right. If he were a cop, he wouldn’t be here alone. There would be sirens by now. A chopper maybe,” he insists.  
  
“Right,” Holden agrees evenly, eye contact with Dan still unbroken. “Let me prove it. Then we all just walk away from this.”  
  
The gun oscillates uncertainly, but doesn’t depart. “You want us to let you go? Let _him_ go? We’ll have a SWAT team at our door before--”  
  
“Let him go. I’ll stay with you, he gets on a plane.”  
  
“Like a hostage?” Dragutin asks.  
  
Holden nods, but his stare down with Dan continues. “You can’t kill a Fed. Least of all an FBI agent. Do you know the kind of heat that will come down on you? You will skyrocket up the most wanted list-- even if you make it overseas, they’ll drag you back. The USA would send a diplomat to Cuba if it meant putting a Fed killer behind bars. The system only works if people are afraid of it, Dan. ...this is a shitty, dangerous situation for you. I get it. But there’s an easier way ahead. Nobody gets shot. There’s no mess to clean up. There’s no federal taskforce hunting you down. Okay?”  
  
The staredown breaks. Dan groans, rubbing his forehead as he steps back. He still has his little European gun vaguely aimed towards Holden’s abdomen, though this seems to be thoughtlessness rather than a threat. “He won’t come back and try to settle the score?”  
  
“Maybe. I mean, you’re being surveilled, so you have to disappear anyway, right? I can-- I can come. For awhile. Then we split up and he has no reason to find you. ...he’s been trying to keep me out of jail, Dan. He won’t be able to make this official, so he’ll be all alone. One man _might_ come looking for you, versus the entire force of the United States stopping at nothing to put you away. Let me help you take the easy way out.”  
  
Dragutin is nodding along nervously.  
  
Holden continues on; relentless, palliative. “We drive back to Anchorage. I’ll show you my passport, prove that I’m telling the truth. My dad gets on a plane, and he disappears. Then we disappear our separate ways. He’ll never have a reason to come looking for you.”  
  
Dan, finally, is nodding along.  
  
Bill is beginning to think Holden missed his true calling in life: not crime solving, but hostage negotiation.  
  
But verbal finesse can’t reshape reality. And the reality is: there’s no passport back in Anchorage.


	9. Chapter 9

Bill’s teeth chatter for at least the first hour of the drive. He’s in the back seat, opposite a frowning Dragutin (still toting Bill's stainless steel handgun). Dan is driving, Holden hunched over far into the front seat's passenger side. He’s small, uninterested, unassuming. Another remnant of prison survival strategies, Bill suspects. The car is a little over-worked, gaudy interior finishes like red leather upholstery and wood panelling that seems to be a custom instalments. Dirty, too. There’s a few loose wrappers by Bill’s feet, and an unopened, dented coke can. At least the heat works.  
  
Bill is so focused on the relief of recirculation that the smell of tobacco seems sourceless. He looks over to find Dragutin silently, nervously smoking.  
  
“...could I have a cigarette?” Bill asks. He’d like to pretend there’s some deeper strategy at play, an attempt to forge a connection, humanize himself to Dan and Dragutin. Really, he’s just getting nicotine cravings.  
  
Dragutin reaches back into his jacket pocket, stopping with his hand inside. Dan looks in the rearview, then gives a permissive shrug.  
  
Dragutin emerges with a second cigarette between his short fingers. There’s a small, blue ink knuckle tattoo on his index finger. An anchor, maybe. Or some kind of embellished coptic cross. He puts the cigarette tip to tip with the one he’s already smoking, and draws a long breath. As the cigarette tip’s fiery orange flares across the car’s interior, the tattoo gains momentary clarity. Bill suddenly places the finger tattoos amongst Holden’s meticulous notes and poorly sketched recreations of the blue ink tattoos: a slightly elongated club symbol, as you’d expect on vintage playing cards; on his other index finger resting cautiously along the barrel of the gun, Bill sees the spade.  
  
“So, what do you do at the FBI?” Dan asks, still looking in the rear view. Glinting blue eyes swim with rebounding headlights, white-blonde lashes barely visible. He’s handsome in a distinctly different way to Holden; his exaggerated square features seem to default to an unfriendly smirk, his fashionable haircut and tacky leather jacket herald his high opinion of his own looks.  
  
Bill takes the cigarette and has a desperate drag of it. Not his usual Dunhills, but Bill buys those out of habit rather than discernment. It’s tobacco, and the cigarette is doing its job. “I catch people who kill children,” he says, emitting smoke too early for full satisfaction. Saying he advised on cold cases would be too much of a give away-- not to mention that ‘pedophile hunter’ is no doubt the most sympathetic interpretation of his position, even to those less fond of law enforcement. “Kill, or hurt. I study the behaviour of pedophiles, the patterns of their abuse.”  
  
“Shit. Like, what’s his name-- John Wayne Gacy? The Killer Clown?” Dan says, turning about from the perilous road ahead.  
  
“Well, not precisely.” Bill says, taking his time now. “His youngest victims were fourteen. I deal with killers of children. Prepubescents.” He readjusts his own posture, imagines that Dan is in Brioni, sipping Lagavulin, withholding crucial departmental funding. Bill turns on the charm, or rather, what passes for charm when it comes to lobbying politicians: the confiding of grisly details on open cases. “...have you been following the Gacy case, then?”  
  
“Shit yeah,” Dan responds, punctuated with a slap across the steering wheel. “Trial updates and everything. I lived right next to Rosemont. That guy who survived was kidnapped a couple of blocks away from my local bar. I’m not stupid enough to let some homo get me alone. Or he might have gone for me. You gotta carry yourself like you mean business.”  
  
Bill, thoroughly inured to the ‘it could have been me’ stories from civilians, nods with feigned thoughtfulness. He allows his eyes to roam across Slobodan Miljković as he drags down another warning breath of tobacco. His teeth aren’t chattering now, but the headache seems here to stay. “Carrying a gun isn’t a bad idea, either. ...he did target blonds, they’re saying.”  
  
Dan appears dissatisfied by the lack of insider information, and goes back to the road. Bill gets through most of his cigarette before Dan tries again: “What about the other big case in Chicago last year? The police officers who burned down all those houses? They killed kids, right?”  
  
Bill struggles to keep his cigarette steady as his teeth suddenly set on edge.  
  
Holden has swivelled his head all of an inch to obliquely examine Bill. His whole body is tensed like an industrial spring. Considering going for Slobodan’s gun, perhaps. Or Dragutin’s.

Bill brings tightly tied hands up to his lips, removes the cigarette. “That one was my case.” He hears not a suggestion of his own anxiety. Too early to be relieved.  
  
Dan turns back from the road yet again, giddy with with morbid fascination. “No. Shit.”  
  
Bill swallows a rebuke about reckless driving, and instead nods grimly. “Creighton and Bradshaw. Home invasions. Killed at least three entire families in cold blood, burned their houses to the ground to try to make the crime scene more difficult to analyze. One of them resisted arrest, got shot. The other one got the chair. ...that the case you’re thinking of?”  
  
Dan blinks, then nods energetically.  
  
“The chair? Like, the electric chair?” Dragutin asks beside him. The quiet question seems borderline congratulatory.  
  
“Mhm,” Bill hums, around a cigarette. _So, moment of truth. Do you recognise me from the news? ...and, more worryingly, do you recognise Holden?_

Neither man appears to have any ill-timed recollections. The boxy, breathy interior gives way to silence for a few minutes. The tendon standing out against Holden’s pale neck disappears.  
  
"What were they like?" Dan finally asks, in a different, deferential tone.  
  
"I only talked to one of them. Creighton. He was very self-righteous, for a kid killer. A state of self-induced denial, said the consulting criminal psychologist. He really didn't like talking about the details of what he'd done. Had to always blame someone else."  
  
“What are you working on at the moment?” Dan presses.  
  
Bill gives another deliberately measured response: “Case in Harker Heights, Texas. Missing six year old. Possibly linked to three other abductions. We found one of the bodies in a creek bed that dried up last summer. Stabbed to death. Undressed down to her underwear, but not sexually assaulted. We’re not very optimistic about finding the missing girl alive.” The missing woman is twenty-six years old, actually. Otherwise, a mostly accurate description of the case Special Agent Nicholas Mcardle is pursuing.

Holden’s mouth is open with curiosity-- seeming to briefly forget his role amongst the dramatis personae-- and then he bows his head.  
  
“Oh. So nothing in Alaska?” the blond asks in inappropriate disappointment.  
  
“If only. Coulda claimed the flight up as a work expense. Flight from Virginia isn’t pocket change.”  
  
“How much money did he steal from you?” He gestures over to where Holden is dabbing at his bloody nose tenderly. “You know. Colton, Holden, whatever.”  
  
Bill tries to land on a somewhat believable amount. “Six hundred dollars.” _Too little, probably. Shit._  
  
Now, Holden does interject, with well-versed petulance: “Well, I just saved your life, so maybe--”  
  
“We wouldn’t have killed Mr. Tench. Don’t be stupid,” Dan interrupts. He sounds so confident that Bill wonders if he even knows that he’s lying. “We thought he was coming to kill us, packing heat like that. People have fake IDs, you know. Could have been hired by a rival. A hitman.”  
  
_In this fucking town?_ “Well, I appreciate that,” Bill says. “I should have mentioned earlier, but If you want any more proof of my identity, we could drive back to my car. I have--” _Case files concerning you? ...no, not in the car any more._ “--my briefcase. It has official FBI documents.”  
  
Dan shakes his head. “I like you, man. I trust you. We need men like you, to catch child molesters. What you’re doing is, you know...” He gives in to rumination upon the virtue of Bill’s vocation. “Honourable,” he decides.  
  
_That means so much, coming from a man of your moral standing._ “And I appreciate that too. More than you know. ...I’m sorry I startled you both like that. You had every right to try to incapacitate me, if you believed your lives were in danger. I spent so long trying to find Holden. I was being too eager by half.”  
  
Dragutin scratches the back of his neck. Still exhibiting so many guilty tics he might as well have ‘arrest me’ sharpied onto his forehead.  
  
Bill continues, evenly. He’s never thought of himself as even approaching a decent father, but now he musters all the paternal energy he can. “This whole thing probably makes me seem like a bad cop, right? I was gonna cut a deal with you, to keep Holden out of prison. But you have to see this from my perspective. I hunt down real evil. It puts other so-called ‘felonies’ into perspective. Two men selling drugs to make a bit of extra cash, that lands pretty low in my list of priorities.”  
  
“Right. Everyone has to survive,” Dan agrees. “How is it any worse than owning a liquor store?””  
  
_I would certainly arrest a liquor store owner who was murdering people and dumping their bodies out on the Alaskan coast._ “Everyone has their vices,” he agrees, taking a pointed drag of the cigarette.  
  
“Some people can purchase theirs over the counter,” Holden says in a dreamlike, far-distant cadence.  
  
It sounds familiar. Bill’s own words, maybe. _One of the Winnebago interviews?_ Bill tries not to get side-tracked. “Unless your vice is murdering children, either of you two,” he says as he leans forward to squash the spent cigarette in a brimming ashtray, “it’s none of my business, quite literally.”

  
  
After another half hour or so, Dragutin again brings out the cigarettes. He lights two more, offers one over with an odd, grimacing smile tugging at his acne scarred cheek. The gun still hasn’t left his right hand, but Bill would bet serious money that he’d be reluctant to use it. Now, he wouldn’t be betting money. He’d be betting his own life, and much more importantly, Holden’s. Dan would use his gun, Bill thinks. Dan would probably _enjoy_ using his gun.  
  
And, there’s Holden’s own plans to account for. Bill strains at the crushing red-black of the headache overhead, creates some scant space for abstracted thought processes. Holden isn’t pulling a miraculous, forged passport out of thin air (for a moment, Bill thinks maybe, maybe, he’s overprepared and brilliant enough to have planned for this-- but that’s got to be the head injury talking) but the kid rarely operates without a plan. He conned Dan into driving back to Anchorage deliberately. So what’s in Anchorage?  
  
Bill gets a half inch down his second cigarette before the obvious finally peeks through the agony-induced mental blockade.  
  
_That inane, waste-of-resources surveillance post._ Holden must have figured out his endgame with a loaded gun at his temple. Maybe even before he interrupted the conversation at all. After all, he announced himself, rather than sneaking off to find a phone booth and alert the local authorities. Even Homer has a tiny local police department, though how quick they’d be to rouse, Bill is unsure.  
  
The telepathically-divined plan becomes less concrete after the triumph that is steering Dan and Dragutin to a police outpost. There’s a radio in the foxhole; Anchorage PD could be there in maybe three or four minutes, which is more time than the thirty odd seconds it’ll take for Dan and Dragutin to realise Holden’s cityside apartment is pure fabrication. Even if Holden has an apartment in mind to lead them to, his key isn’t going to fit in the door.  
  
The strategy devolves into insubstantial fragments as Bill tries to decide how he and Holden buy themselves that extra three or four minutes. Jim Barney (just Barney, most likely) will be carrying his own Bureau issued weapon. He could intervene, if Bill and Holden alert him sufficiently. Perhaps Bill could fake a stroke; he did just sustain a serious head injury, after all. There’s certainly less enmity directed at him than Holden, and they might be more reluctant to shoot him given that he's a federal agent. On the other hand, Holden is being extremely uncommunicative. Unless there’s a well-hidden code in the two scant remarks Holden has spoken during the car trip, there’s been no cryptic conspiring here. That means Holden has a plan that he doesn’t need Bill for, and if Bill does anything unexpected, he might foil Holden’s own coup de grâce.  
  
Bill stubs out the cigarette clumsily (the numbness has yet to retreat from his fingers, probably thanks to the unforgiving rope scoring into his wrists) and slumps into his seat. He’s warmed up, mostly, though it’s no improvement. Maybe the cold was doing something to keep the headache under control.  
  
Dan’s driving is even more reckless than his own, but Bill isn’t stressed about hitting ice and going off the road. A car crash is probably a better overall outcome for Holden’s survival. And his own. The confusion could be a good opportunity to disarm these two, Bill supposes, without any definitive choreographing. Complex thought is beginning to lose out to the mindlessness of unabating pain. Bill presses the apex of his skull into the numbing thrum of the car window. Now that the road has wound inland, the stillness of the night has devolved into a stationary mist that blends with the falling snow into indeterminate static. Pines flicker forward in dark stripes as the car speeds past; outstripped foes that disappear off into obscurity to lick their wounds. After blinking against the crescendos of streetlights down a mile or two of empty highway, Bill resolves to close his eyes just for a minute.  
  
He’s not sure how long his eyes are closed. A raised voice interrupts his retreat from the bleak world.  
  
“Is he-- is he unconscious?” Holden is asking in a rough, uneven voice.  
  
“No,” Bill grunts uncertainly, blinking himself back to the car’s fraught interior.  
  
Holden is leaning over the bench seat. Whites show around the pale eyes, an industrial drill honed in on Dragutin. There’s the flash of bared teeth between the blood-crusted, parted lips. In fact, his whole tense body seems to be occupied with some demonic wrath. The bound hands resting against the leather headrest are white and mangled tight. But Holden’s murderousness is a transient expression. The young man hears Bill’s voice, and comes to. “I was just-- just worried. He has a head injury,” Holden meekly apologizes as he settles back into his seat.  
  
Bill doesn’t close his eyes again. Dan slows down fractionally when they reach the outskirts of Anchorage, and the more built-up highways. The occasional vehicle passes, but no steady traffic. If Bill were alone, he’d be thinking about waiting for a red light, then tucking and rolling out of a car door. He doesn’t even entertain abandoning Holden to these men.  
  
Snow is falling in Anchorage, too. The city is largely lifeless at this hour, low skyline blinking and sputtering against the oppressive weather. Holden supplies directions downtown, confirming Bill’s hypothesis about where Dan is being steered to. Holden points to the curb directly surveyed by the cafe’s storage room, and Dan pulls the red car curbside in loaded silence.  
  
_What’s the fucking plan, Holden?_ _  
_ _  
_ “Which building is yours?” Dan asks, squinting.  
  
“On the left, up ahead. You have to go through the parking lot.”  
  
Bill thinks the building set back off the road really is a small apartment block, but it could be a commercial holding. The parking lot in front is doused yellow-white by an overhead streetlight.  
  
“I normally park my bike--” Holden continues blithely.  
  
“Okay,” Dan interrupts decisively, turning off the motor. “Get out. If you see or hear anything suspicious, you kill the FBI agent,” he tells Dragutin.  
  
Dragutin takes a long time to nod.  
  
They've barely taken a dozen steps before Holden stops dead, patting down his own pockets with bound hands. “Shit, wait, my keys-- they must have fallen out--”  
  
“I have your keys,” Dan mutters. He reaches inside the pocket of his slouching leather jacket. “Are these--”  
  
“Those must be his. Look, that tag is for a hire car, right?” Holden responds, sounding out of breath. “Are you _sure_ you have--”  
  
Dan’s tattooed knuckles fight back inside the stiff leather jacket. “Yeah, see--” Another set of keys. Bill recognises the keychain dangling down: a pewter Statue of Liberty. Shit. _New York._ Holden’s smart, he can spin a story about a holiday or--  
  
The concern isn’t warranted. Dan is too busy staring down a passing car to examine the keyring. The murky red of taillights catch the swinging souvenir as he extends the bunch of keys to Holden.  
  
Holden reaches for them but fumbles. Bill can’t tell whether the awkwardness is played up. A splayed second attempt also misses. The keys bounce towards the dirty salt and snow beneath the curb.  
  
Dan stops eying off the civilian vehicle, turning the brunt of his attention on Holden. Holden sinks to his hands and knees, reaches for the keys. He almost lays fingers to them when Dan kicks the bound hands away.  
  
“Fuck,” Holden curses, overbalancing and sprawling backwards into the wet muck of the gutter.  
  
“Were you trying to-- were you trying to drop them down the gutter?” Dan asks, towering over the fallen man.  
  
“No. I got hit in the face, okay? By you. I’m sorry I’m a little unsteady,” Holden retorts, a little hot for Bill’s liking. “And my hands are--” he raises his bound wrists.  
  
“Keep ‘em down,” Dan snaps, glancing nervously around.  
  
Bill’s own bound hands have formed fists. In his peripheral, he evaluates Dragutin’s nervous expression, and the gun restlessly knocking against his own knee. He holds Bill’s firearm reluctantly away from himself, as something infected or foul. He doesn’t want to use the gun, but that was never the question. The question is ‘will he use the gun?’. Bill’s experience is that there’s a chasm between the number of times he’s _wanted_ to shoot someone, and the number of times he’s pulled the trigger.  
  
“Did you do that on purpose?” Dan demands again, quiet and venomous. His gun is out of his jacket pocket, only partially shielded from the street. Now Bill can see the gun, under the ambient downtown illumination, he's certain it's Eastern Bloc hardware. A Makarov. FEG, perhaps. "Is there not really a passport, Holden?"  
  
“I already told you I didn’t do it on purpose. We’re on a public street. Put the gun away. Someone will see,” Holden hisses. “Do you want to get arrested with a kidnapped FBI agent in the back of your car? Seriously?”  
  
Dan wavers. He pulls the gun closer to his own body, but never pockets it. “Get your fucking keys,” he gestures.  
  
“Sure,” Holden says moodily. He rolls over, pulling back up to his knees, then reaches down to the snow. The keys are in his hands, and he jangles them melodramatically. “They were nowhere near the grate. You don’t need to panic. Jesus.”  
  
There’s another car passing, and Dan steps back from the roadside without pocketing the gun. Holden takes another few seconds to awkwardly straighten up, so Dan steps closer and drags him to his feet by the shoulder.  
  
“You do anything else _funny_ and I’ll--” he threatens.  
  
“It was an accident,” Holden huffs. “C’mon.” He lurches in the direction of the possible apartment block, with Dan in close concert.  
  
Bought himself time, and attention. But there’s still no sign of Jim Barney, or any other law enforcement. They've reached the parking lot now, about to disappear out of Bill's eyeline. _Holden’s plan be damned. He’s going to get himself killed._  
  
Bill takes a gamble on self-preservation as a behavioural incentive. Summoning that same paternal energy, he addresses Dragutin in a low whisper. “I need you to stay calm and listen to me. Only one of you two gets to turn. Ends up in a nice, comfortable witness protection program, instead of a maximum security prison. Now, I’m pulling for you, Dragutin. ...you don’t want a shoot-out, do you?”  
  
Dragutin barely shakes his head. No move to shout for Dan. The gun isn’t raised.  
  
Bill tries to remember his basic crisis negotiation. _Cut down alternatives. Offer the one way out._ “Six years ago, someone died. Someone close to you, Dragutin. He ended up dumped off Homer. That’s why I was down there. There’s an open investigation into you, by the FBI, and it’s not going away. Do you want to be our informant?”  
  
“...yes,” he whispers. The single syllable is overburdened with desperation, seeping and weighty and unstable.  
  
“Good. Give me back my gun, discreetly.”  
  
Dragutin rushes it over in the darkness, at about hip height. “I can cut the rope, too,” he breathes. His eyes dart nervously into the parking lot that Dan and Holden disappeared into.  
  
Bill nods very slightly, then regrets the waste of time it will be. _Are they across that parking lot yet? Are they at an apartment door that won't open?_ But Bill’s not sure how he’d go about firing his gun with his wrists tied, and Dragutin’s fold-out knife makes swift work of the ligature. The moment the blade slips through the plastic rope, Bill surges away. He sheds the bindings carelessly as he eases out of the car door, skidding a little on the compacted sidewalk in an effort to avoid the louder, fresher snow. His fingers feel utterly uncooperative on the gun, numb and fumbling. His trigger finger seems to be functional. That will do. He stays low, pressing close to the shopfront that shields him from the off-street parking.  
  
“It’s number fourteen, it’s--” he hears Holden say ahead.  
  
Dan must sense his arrival, because as Bill rounds the corner, the little European gun is out and up. Not aimed at Bill. Pressed threatening against Holden’s head. Holden is wrenched into place as a body shield, a handful of hair keeping him stationary.  
  
Holden is meeting his eyes, and Bill wishes he weren’t.  
  
Under normal circumstances, Bill might just shoot around Holden. Not with this headache, not with frost-bitten, barely cooperating digits on the trigger. “Put down your weapon, Miljković,” Bill shouts across the snow-sheeted parking lot. He’s almost certain he bungled the pronunciation, but he can tell the never-mentioned surname rattles the armed man.  
  
“You put down _your_ weapon. Or I blow your son’s head off--” His expression darkens, probably with the realization that Holden’s story was grade-A bullshit.  
  
Holden seems unfazed by the gun forced against his upper ear. An individual with a tenuous self-preservation instinct, to put it lightly. “Don’t you want to know how we found you?” he asks Dan, in a chillingly conversational tone. “You disposed of the body very well, after all. Cutting off an identifying tattoo. That’s very diligent.”  
  
If Holden sought to create panic, he certainly succeeded. Miljković takes a long time to respond, and when he does, his voice is taut and frantic. “Shut up. Holden and I are going to get back into the car and--” and Dan isn’t speaking any more, because there’s the pattering, then crunching of an approaching sprint.  
  
“You’re surrounded, Dan,” comes Jim Barney’s authoritative voice, only a touch out of breath. He steps out of shadow, his own Bureau-issued Smith and Wesson shining in the stark streetlight.  
  
Dan has a terrifying moment of consideration. Icy eyes dart between the two identical guns pointed his way. Then, he lowers the firearm from Holden’s head.  
  
“Set it down.”  
  
Dan releases what looked to be a painful grip on Holden’s hair, and bends double to set down the gun by his feet. Bill keeps his weapon trained every inch of the way to the ground.  
  
“Slide it forward to me,” instructs Jim.  
  
Dan makes some effort to, but the gun doesn’t go far before hitting a dirty bank of snow and coming to rest.  
  
“On your knees, hands behind your head. Hey, you too, Ford,” Barney interjects, as Holden steps towards the firearm. “Don’t touch that gun.”  
  
Holden squints in affront, then lowers himself down with more attitude than necessary.  
  
Bill advances. He picks up the little black gun where it has skidded to a halt against compacted, trodden grey snow, puts the FEG in his waistband. His own real gun remains raised as Jim Barney tightens handcuffs on a cooperative but glowering Miljković.  
  
“Bill needs an ambulance. He sustained a very serious head wound. I think he was unconscious for a time,” Holden tells Jim, still on his knees. “Is it just police on their way or did you order--”  
  
“I’m fine,” Bill grunts.  
  
Barney unclips the radio from his belt. “Ten fifty-two, also on Cordova,” he says, then addresses the handcuffed man. “Lie down, flat on your stomach.”  
  
“...just Dan? Or may I get up?” Holden asks sardonically.  
  
“What the _hell?_ ” Barney finally snaps, without answering Holden. Bill isn’t sure he’s heard Mr. Professionalism swear before.  
  
Permission is not forthcoming, but Holden stands. There's the unmelodious blare of an approaching police siren.  
  
Rather than answer his colleague’s outburst, Bill turns towards the parked Coronet.  
  
“Do you have a blade or something? He tied this too tight, I don’t want to lose a finger,” he hears Holden saying behind him, in an uncannily steady voice.  
  
Bill thought Dragutin might make a break for it. While not ideal, this would have been inconsequential in regards to Bill’s highest priority: neutralizing the threat to Holden’s life. Dragutin didn’t run. He’s sitting right where Bill left him in the backseat, watching the arriving police force with a resigned expression.  
  
Bill doubles back, to where Barney is standing guard over Slobodan Miljković.  
  
“He’s gonna cooperate, if we cut him a deal. Dragutin, that is,” Bill tells Jim under his breath. “Lemme go handle him. Keep the cops away for a second.”  
  
Barney fixes him with a hard, searching look. He nods. Bill hears more sirens incoming but puts his back to the revolving red and blue lightshow. He holsters his weapon beneath his open coat and approaches Dragutin as he would a skittish farm animal: slowly and on a purposeful angle. The car door is still open; Bill stops short, leaning an elbow on the cold metal as he bends down to Dragutin’s level. “Could I have another cigarette?”  
  
Dragutin responds mechanically to the request. He hands the cigarette over, then extends the plastic, gas-station lighter.  
  
Bill lights his own this time. “Thank you,” he murmurs, as he passes back the lighter. “You ready to tell the police about Aleksander?” he asks encouragingly.  
  
Dragutin shrugs despondently, fishing out another cigarette and lighting it between cupped hands.  
  
“Tell me,” Bill says, seriously. “That’ll make it easier. Once the secret is out in the open. You can talk me through it, first.”  
  
The Yugoslavian bolsters himself with nicotine, but despite steadying, he doesn’t speak. Bill is about to prompt again when Dragutin begins: “Product was going missing. Numbers were off. Dan thought Alex was selling it.” He takes another drag of the cigarette, and Bill mirrors the motion to set the young man at ease. Dragutin is shaking his head unhappily as he speaks. “Dan and Alex never, uh-- anyway. Dan got his gun out, told me to tie him up. He-- he hit him. Alex kept denying that he’d stolen the drugs. Dan told me to put the bag over his head. I think he saw this in one of his movies. It was a bag the product came wrapped up in. It was thick… there’s a word for it. Thick plastic.” Dragutin’s expression is now animated by relived horror. “It was only supposed to scare him. Get him talking. I took it off-- well, the first time, he was still denying it-- Dan told me to hold it longer-- and he wasn’t breathing.”  
  
“He… he suffocated? You killed him?” Bill asks, dull with shock.  
  
“No,” Dragutin denies, quick, vehement. “I was just doing what Dan told me.”  
  
Bill’s situational sympathy drains away, leaving a void of merciless professionalism. They’ll still need Dragutin’s testimony, to piece this case together. “Right. Dan had his gun, didn’t he? You had to cooperate.”

Dragutin nods fervently. “After we-- Dan called his uncle-- Dan made me cut off the tattoo. And that was when we saw the marks. He’d been stealing product to use himself.”  
  
“This is uncle Ivan?”

The hunched man seems first surprised, then perhaps relieved. He nods.  
  
Bill mirrors that too. “They’re gonna take you down to the station. I’m gonna wait, get checked out by the ambulance. Make sure you tell them Dan had the gun on you, okay? That’s crucial in all this.”  
  
“Thank you,” Dragutin says, as Bill motions over the uniformed officers.  
  
Bill doesn’t watch the murderer being led into the squad car. His focus is on a stand-off between Jim, Holden, and a turned man in a patterned ski jacket who must be Detective Curley. Holden is unwinding the severed rope from his own wrists, not looking up. There’s tension in the postures of all three, and Curley looks drawn as he returns to confer with another policeman.  
  
Bill slumps against the car, straining to hear the exchange that continues between Holden and Jim.  
  
“I’m not under arrest, then?” Holden asks the FBI agent in an austere, calculating tone.  
  
“We need to know what happened,” Jim Barney is replying, almost stern. “And Bill should go to the hospital. You said so yourself. An official statement made down at the station is the most effective way of settling any questions that Anchorage PD may have.”  
  
Bill wonders why Holden is committing to this lack of cooperation. _Is this about the heroin you’ve been buying? ...is this about protecting my reputation?_ “Jim,” Bill calls, loud enough to draw attention.  
  
Jim’s lips are pursed as he approaches.  
  
“Here’s what happened,” Bill says, launching directly into quiet explanation. “I got paranoid that Holden was out on the Homer Spit, taking more photographs. I called his girlfriend in New York, harangued the address outta her. I drove out to Homer, and Holden’s cabin was empty. So I went to the spit to drag him out by the ear, and uh, I got myself ambushed like a cadet failing outta basic. Holden was either watching at a safe distance, or he called his girlfriend that night, or he just saw the truck tyre marks in the cabin’s driveway and put two and two together. I’m not sure. He showed up as Dan and Dragutin were discussing how to dispose of my body.”  
  
Barney processes with a series of rapid blinks, gloved fingers dragging over his chin. “Didn’t call the police?”  
  
“Doesn’t seem like it. ...might have weighed up the odds of me surviving while he drove back into town, rounded up someone with a badge to bring to the spit. They-- they were talking about how to kill me in such a way that it seemed accidental. I can only assume, if they deigned me still living, I was going to be drowned.”  
  
Jim's focused facade breaks, revealing a man genuinely shaken. “How did Ford talk ‘em down?” he asks, pulling himself back together. He’s regarding the occupied backseats of the undeparted police cars with a curled lip. No more.  
  
“Sold them some cock-and-bull story about--” Bill winces in anticipation, “--about me being his father. Told them it was a family matter, that I was hunting him down over a stolen checkbook, that me being FBI had nothing to do with anything. He was unarmed, unaccompanied, risking his life. Made it that much more compelling. He said he could prove it, that his passport back in Anchorage would prove we were related.”  
  
“He just surrendered over to them?”  
  
Bill nods, avoiding eye contact by watching the uncooperative, urgently-illuminated Holden loitering beneath the street light. He’s inorganically still except for his hands, rubbing circulation into his fingers still.  
  
“And they knew him well, because he regularly bought drugs from them,” Jim muses quietly. The definitive, rather than accusatory, nature of the statement doesn’t afford Bill a lot of room for denial. There’s a certain respect afforded; Bill is either competent enough to have discovered this fact, or clever enough to have figured it out from the available evidence. Jim is watching Holden now, too. “I mean, difficult to argue it wasn’t an effective method of information gathering. With the benefit of hindsight.”  
  
Bill has a hard time resenting Jim Barney for his unsparing intellect, however inconvenient it is for the moment. He nods reluctant affirmation, blowing smoke into a fleeting wave with the movement of his lips. “I tell him to go down to the station, and he will. He’ll take my word.”  
  
“I think cooperation would be in his own best interests,” Jim says with a thoughtful (or perhaps disapproving) frown, then, “he saved you, after all. Refusing to testify at this point can only be detrimental. They need to know he wasn’t involved in the assault against you.”  
  
Bill agrees with Jim’s assessment. He doubts Holden will agree, but thinks the kid will cooperate if asked to. _If I’m the one asking._ “Make sure he’s insulated, okay? This was my fuck up.”  
  
Jim says nothing for a long time. He seems drawn back towards the indistinct glut of milling law enforcement. “Bill, I’m not going to lie,” he states clinically.  
  
“I’m not asking you to lie. I’m asking you not to--” Bill grimaces. “Make sure there’s no obstruction charges. Curley, especially. Holden kept a lot from him. Dragutin might mention that Holden was buying heroin if someone starts asking. And the kid has a fake ID in his wallet, if they search him. There’s some petty shit that could get thrown at him, if anyone at Anchorage PD is so inclined.”  
  
Barney exhales tersely.  
  
Bill taps ash, struggling to keep hold of the cigarette. “Tell them to take the solve and move on. Dragutin is going to talk. They should be arresting-- uh, the cargo ship guy-- all these fucking surnames--”  
  
“If those two were supposed to be out on the water tonight to pick up a shipment, and they failed to signal to the vessel, chances are that the shipment of drugs is still on board. I’ll send a team out to search the cargo ship when it comes into port. But, if someone got nervous and threw the drugs overboard, we’re back to relying on testimony alone.” Jim Barney doesn’t need insults or admonishment to rebuke Bill; the fact is, the drug case hangs by a tenuous thread, especially if Dragutin decides to stop talking. Even the murder of Aleksander might be hard to prosecute, if--  
  
_“Aleksander,”_ Bill blurts. “I don’t know if Dragutin is going to cooperate, but he used the name ‘Alex’ for the John Doe. One of Dan’s known associates in Chicago was an Aleksander. The foreign national.”  
  
“Aleksander Mokranjac,” Barney says without pause. “Did Dragutin confirm the surname--”  
  
“No, no, but he fits. Involved in drugs back in Chicago too. Maybe we can find a photograph, compare him to John Doe.”  
  
“Socialist home country means we might be able to extract dental records from a dingy basement storage facility. If the appropriate authorities are cooperative. Or, most optimistically, if he was booked for a drug-related offence over there--”  
  
“We might have fingerprints,” Bill finishes, nodding along.  
  
Jim looks marginally pleased with this development. “Okay. I’ll get that underway. You get it into Holden’s head that he should tell his side of the story first.”  
  
That sounds like something Bill might convince a particularly stupid suspect of during an interrogation. He sees no choice but to nod along, and Barney strides off and into an involved dialogue with a group of uniformed police.  
  
Bill slows his own breathing, trying to soldier his way through another flare up of pain from the back of his skull. Maybe the ambulance being called isn’t _completely_ unjustified. “Holden,” Bill calls across. “Hey, kid.”  
  
Holden Ford picks his way over, cautiously avoiding the increasingly compacted snow on the pavement. Up closer, Bill can see the dried blood settling around his nose in a dark ring, and the half-moon bruise around the base of his eye socket. “Are you okay?” Holden asks, concerned but not particularly friendly.  
  
Bill hand-waves the question, rushing towards his point. He doesn’t want to be seen engaging in prolonged dialogue with Holden; the less time in which they might be ironing out a cohesive lie, the better. “You need to cooperate with us-- with the police. The sooner questions are answered, the sooner they stop digging. You’re not at fault here. Stop acting like you have something to hide.”  
  
“I absolutely--” Holden begins, turns further away from the police cars. “I absolutely have something to hide,” he says, low and serious.  
  
Bill doesn’t respond to that either. “I told Jim I got your address off-- I said your girlfriend. You saw the tyre tracks in the driveway of your cabin, and you figured it out. I don’t want to hear it if you were watching the spit, this is the option that has you the least culpable, so--”  
  
“I _did_ see the tyre tracks. I only went down to the spit to make sure you weren’t searching for me,” Holden retorts.  
  
“Good, that’s good,” Bill praises, and lowers his head in unspoken dismissal.  
  
Holden doesn’t leave. When Bill glances up expectantly, he’s skewered by Holden’s undisguised glare. “It’s true, asshole.”  
  
“Okay,” Bill placates unconvincingly.  
  
“...I was calling Ellis. I wanted to wait ‘til it was late in Connecticut, call him at his home. Remind him just how much he had to lose.”  
  
“You called _Harry Ellis_ ?”  
  
“Well--” Holden is interrupted, or pretends to be interrupted, by the tight warbles of an arriving ambulance. “You better go get checked out.” He turns to leave.  
  
“Holden, Holden,” Bill says, half-rising to catch the trailing, leather-clad right arm. “Don’t lawyer up. You know how that will look. If you aren’t the one explaining, they’ll have to get an explanation of your involvement from Dragutin, or Dan, and--”  
  
“You need to go to hospital,” Holden says superciliously. His winter-pink lower lip twitches, near trembles. He wrenches beyond reach, and marches off. The taut, settled shoulders seem unyielding; a partisan bravely facing off with an enemy firing squad.  
  
Bill sees Barney pointing a tall, frowning paramedic in his direction; Bill emits a weak groan of acceptance, pressing his forehead into one still numb palm. The last thing he wants is medical professionals fretting over him. He should be beside Holden, explaining the night’s events, protecting the kid. Through the lattice of uncooperative fingers, he can make out Holden Ford’s leather jacket, his violence-mussed hair. Engaged in conversation with Barney, and another, uniformed man that Bill recognises as Captain Matlin.  
  
Bill is certain it’s not the head injury that has him knotted up into nausea.


	10. Chapter 10

There’s a cramped, ruthlessly urban quality to Providence Alaska Medical Center, that doesn’t seem quite merited by the density of downtown Anchorage. The last hospital room Bill spent any time in was in Greenwich, Connecticut: all the attentiveness and architectural generosity of overfunding, and a recuperative, arboreal outlook through the wall-to-wall glass. Through the narrow stripes of windows pressed up against Bill’s tight quarters, a sparse, industrial grid peters out into a low-lying sprawl.  
  
Detective Curley and Detective Laramie (an imposing, serious woman who seems to barely speak) arrive shortly after Bill is triaged through to a hospital bed. The pair of detectives proceed to crowd the hospital room further. Their attempts to take Bill’s statement is interrupted several times for tests of Bill’s still numb fingers, tests for concussion, then a detailed medical history. Every time medical professionals allow space, the two detectives close back in. Bill’s eventually completed account of the night's events entirely absolves Holden of responsibility, and in doing so exposes his own amateur decision-making. The conversation has strayed into Dan's (evidentially insignificant) firearm choice when nurses pull Bill away for a head x-ray. To add insult to injury, he’s deemed to be enough risk of collapse to be relegated to a wheelchair.

  
  
When Bill is returned to the tiny, empty hospital room (the wheelchair leaves with the nurse) he finds a phone on his bedside table. Beside it is a written set of instructions for placing an outside call, and a number he half-recognises as Detective Curley’s.  
  
On a hunch, he instead calls the number he’d set up for himself in the requisitioned federal building. Someone will have to go over to pick up case files.  
  
It rings, twice, and then is answered. The hospital phone connection has the cavernous echo of a long-distance, perhaps international call, though Bill happens to know that the call is travelling all of a mile across town. Must be the hospital’s connection. There’s a crescendo of electronically-repeating shuffling, then breathing.  
  
“...Jim?”  
  
“Bill,” comes a relieved, removed Jim Barney. “What did the doctor say?”  
  
Bill relaxes immensely at the sound of his colleague’s voice. “Something along the lines of: make lifestyle changes conducive to not getting knocked unconscious with blunt objects.”  
  
Jim chuckles, which Bill didn’t think the joke merited. Perhaps that’s pity.  
  
“The doctors didn’t seem all that worried,” he continues, blithely. “I don’t even have concussion symptoms, other than the headache, and numb fingers that might just be from the ligatures. They iced the swelling, wheeled me off for an unnecessary head x-ray, gave me a paracetamol. Apparently the good drugs make it harder to notice if I go all dopey from a brain bleed. ...I’m fine,” Bill cuts in, over Jim’s concerned hum. “Really. I might as well have come down to the station. Any news on the whereabouts of our Aleksander Mokranjac?” The deflection feels like a conscious impersonation of Holden Ford. _Hey, the kid’s schtick works._  
  
“Did you--” Jim Barney seems momentarily frustrated. He sighs, in a clipped, restrained way. “I’m waiting on Chicago PD.”  
  
“Dragutin can confirm his identity, anyway.”  
  
“Dragutin isn’t being all that cooperative. He confessed to, uh, ‘accidentally’ killing Aleksander. All of twenty words, then he clammed up. Won’t confirm biographical details. Won’t talk about the drugs. Won’t talk about his uncle’s involvement.”  
  
Bill frowns. “And the drug raid?”  
  
“They’re searching the cargo ship now. Nothing yet. ...it’s a big ship. A lot of potential hiding places,” Barney says. The affected optimism is probably for Bill’s sake. “They found plenty of drugs at Miljković’s residence.”  
  
Bill swears under his breath and stares out into the cosmic, flurrying snow against his window. “How’s the questioning of Dan going? Maybe he’ll flip, if he knows Dragutin already has--”  
  
“We tried that. Played him some taped confession. He hasn’t spoken except to ask for a lawyer.”  
  
Bill grimaces around his next question, trying to sound offhand. “...have you heard from anyone at Quantico?”  
  
“No. And I doubt I do until the morning.”  
  
“If I get formally censured, or they want me back at Quantico to answer to the OPR, you should suggest Agent Bickmore join you. He’ll do a--”  
  
“Dragutin had a pair of binoculars in his coat. Waiting for signals from the arriving vessel, most likely,” Jim interjects. “He would have seen you coming down the spit from a mile away. It’s no wonder they got the jump on you.”  
  
Bill winces, remembering parking his truck right beside the road. “I don’t know if that makes me feel any less stupid.”  
  
Jim speaks his next words far quieter. “I should have done my research on him. On Ford. If this hadn’t gone so far--”  
  
“This isn’t on you. Or on him. He saved my life.”  
  
“Nobody is debating that he saved your life. I also know exactly why you were out there.”  
  
Bill stops breathing.  
  
Jim Barney’s voice drops even further. “I mean, an unarmed civilian who has repeatedly tailed dangerous drug dealers? I recognized the obsessive personality, without knowing he was mentally ill. Even after you vouched for him, I was worrying that he’d keep working the case behind our back. ...I should have nipped this in the bud.”  
  
Bill pats himself down for a cigarette and finds none. “He did actually stop working the case, when I asked him to.”  
  
“Sure, but you’re talking about a pattern of behaviour here--”  
  
“Thank you for being down at street level so quick,” Bill interrupts. “I didn’t have the situation under control at all. You were the one who convinced him to put the gun down. Thank you, Jim.”  
  
“You don’t have to mention it,” Jim mutters, a little sheepish. He’s away from the line for a moment, informing someone he’ll see them at the precinct. A few beats of silence, and he speaks again, no longer hushed: “All that said about Ford, the involvement of an author with a reputation for excoriating police departments should actually work in our favour. Anchorage PD will have to worry about landing up as the villains of a best-selling crime novel, if they go scorched earth. They have to know you two are friends.”  
  
A tight knot forms in Bill’s gut. He had been so eager to clear Holden’s name that he hadn’t even considered that his statement to Anchorage PD might be used for politics instead of policing. Should have played up the head injury, bowed out of their questions. “If this ends up with bad press, Sheppard will want heads to roll. Yours cannot be one of them, Jim. You did nothing wrong. If it comes down to that, I will take full, public responsibility and--”  
  
“If we get these two cases wrapped up, there won’t be any bad press for Sheppard to read about,” Jim interjects.  
  
“Make sure that neither you, nor Ford, ends up the scapegoat here, okay?” Bill mutters.  
  
“...well, I think Ford has the right idea. The minute you were in that ambulance he was buttering up Detective Curley about how crucial he was to navigating Anchorage’s unfriendly underbelly,” Jim says, sounding impressed in spite of himself. “They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; I think I have a candidate for the least sincere.”  
  
“Hah.”  
  
“Detective Curley is probably angling for a name check in Ford’s next--”  
  
“Hang on,” Bill interrupts, tracking an arrival through the opaque glass.  
  
There’s a knock, but the door swings immediately inward without any polite hesitation. The doctor (neurologist, Bill thinks) seems to default to a terminally concerned expression: a heavy rift of frown line between his upturned brows, a deep cupid’s bow, and cleft chin. The features combine to give off the impression that this man’s face was folded for storage, and never ironed flat afterwards. “Mr. Tench?” he interrupts, purposeful but difficult to read. He sees the phone, frown scoring ever deeper inward.  
  
“I have to go, Jim. If you need anything from me--” Bill trails off. “I don’t know how you can call me. They might connect you. Doc is looking at my phone with an intention to confiscate it--”  
  
The doctor (Milburn, maybe?) clears his throat and rattles straight a file in his hand.  
  
“I’ll keep you in the loop. I can come by, if I can’t get connected. Providence is a block away from the station,” Jim Barney reassures. “I’ll see you soon.”  
  
“Okay I’ll--,” Bill says, to an empty line. He puts the phone down, sliding the little table away from the bed, looking up expectantly.  
  
“Hello, Special Agent,” the doctor says, no less dour.  
  
“Hello, doctor.” Bill wonders if this is his standard, intimidating bedside manner. _Or--_ “...bad news?”  
  
“The CT scan shows a linear fracture to the parietal bone in your skull. You were very lucky. No displacement or depression, and the break is a hairline fracture-- only just visible on the CT. About an eight of an inch length--”  
  
Bill shakes his head in disbelief, one hand rising to the deflated bruising. “I feel completely fine. My headache has almost gone away.”  
  
“I’m pleased to hear that. Unfortunately, your skull is still fractured,” the man says, almost wry.

The doctor mercifully gives a brusque, unsympathetic run down of the prognosis, and the medical observation Bill is to be subjected to, while Bill, for his part, nods along and barely listens. Then Bill and his fractured skull are left alone in the dull hospital room. There’s no TV, not even a newspaper. The chipping blue paint on the wall opposite his bed is such a calculated, condescending attempt at calming hospital admittees that Bill finds his temper fraying every time he so much as glances at it. He looks instead at his wedding ring, briefly reflects upon his own mortality and the condition of his eternal soul out of a sense of situational obligation. He quickly grows restless; protracted introspection has never been a strong suit, and Bill certainly doesn’t feel as if he very nearly died. A hurried but jovial nurse comes by, to test his cognition, and the dexterity of his fingers. The distraction is welcome, but fleeting. He tries to charm her into buying him a packet of cigarettes, but she remains noncommittal. The next nurse who comes by flatly refuses to. He’ll need to badger his next visitor for smokes.  
  
Shortly after the second nurse leaves, in the pettiest of rebellions, Bill lifts himself to sit astride the bed. When no hospital staff arrive to harangue him into lying back down, he gets to his feet. He’s attached to the heavy EKG monitor by a finger clip that he assumes will begin blaring an alarm if disconnected, so he’s not going very far. Not that there’s very far to go, in this confining room. Just standing steady and unassisted is a relief. Possibly too great a relief; Bill wonders if he’s engaging in willful self-delusion about the severity of his injuries.  
  
From his new, lofty vantage point, Bill can make out details of the deserted city street, a few commercial buildings behind. Beyond that, it is as if a handful of square cut, rose-gold glitter has been tossed haphazardly into the darkness. Upon more measured inspection, the bright rectangles are windows dotted into snow-capped homes. Every glass surface pointed Bill’s way is reflecting the red rising sun that must be dawning beyond the far side of the hospital.

  
  
Bill is still watching blissful dawn hues mingle with unadulterated white, wishing he had a cigarette, when he hears footsteps approaching. He reclines back on the bed, fixing the blanket over his legs, to spare himself the lecture.  
  
The door swings inwards, but there’s no nurse’s uniform, no white coat. A civilian shouldn’t have been able to get so far into the hospital after visiting hours, but Bill’s not all that surprised to see Holden Ford has engineered his way past reception and several nurse’s stations.  
  
Bill reflexively smiles, but any hopes of a touching reunion are dashed by Holden’s fiercely critical scowl. 

“Telling me to talk to the police,” Holden begins heatedly, before the door is even closed behind him. He’s still wearing his motorcycle jacket, open over a woolen sweater and a peeking collar dotted with several dime-sized blotches of deep brown dried blood. The black eye is mild enough, but the tip of his nose is still red and a little swollen. His hair has risen into a rough, uncoordinated wave; even that extent of disarray is remarkable on Holden Ford. He shuts the door roughly. “What were you fucking thinking?” Swear words never sound right coming out his mouth, in timbre, in tone. Borrowed from a hardened cellmate, most likely.  
  
Bill shrugs. He's not up to the argument that Holden clearly wants. “The sooner they got the full story, and the less incentive there was for them to do digging, or worse still, get it out of Dan and Dragutin.”  
  
“That could not be more backwards. Cooperate with the cops because you have something to hide?”  
  
“It’s a remarkable circumstance. Normal criminals don’t have an FBI agent backing their story up.”  
  
“I am _not_ a criminal,” Holden returns tersely.  
  
Instead of mentioning the multiple heroin purchases, Bill deescalates with a vague handwave. “You know what I meant--”  
  
Holden doesn’t appear to even hear the concession. “Walking into danger, potentially blowing the whole case. Because you can never, ever take me at my fucking word,” the wild-eyed man fumes.  
  
“It’s not about trusting you, Holden.”  
  
“Oh, it _absolutely_ is.”  
  
“Of course I act stupid when I think you’re in danger. I love you.”  
  
Holden is rendered slack-jawed for a beat. He snaps his mouth shut, orders his expression back into righteous fury. “That doesn’t excuse it,” he huffs.  
  
Bill nods, smoothing his undershirt for decorum’s sake. “I know. I shouldn’t have been on the Homer Spit at all. ...hey, you got to play the hero this time.”  
  
Holden rolls his eyes, perhaps at Bill’s words, perhaps the effort to make himself presentable. He opens his mouth to say something more, and then seems to think the better of it. He evaluates Bill, the hospital room, then the reading on the EKG monitor. Pulling his leather jacket protectively around himself, he turns to leave.  
  
“Thank you for saving my life,” Bill calls after him. He tries to muster undefensive sincerity, but he hears his own despondence. Holden didn’t even see fit to respond to that declaration.  
  
The young man doubles back, finger raised. “Do you know what I would do if I lost you? To myself? Do you have any idea-- any idea at _all_ \--”  
  
“Look, Holden. I’m not trying to be an asshole, I know I was in the wrong. But this-- this outrage is hard to swallow, coming from you. You risked your life starting this investigation, it could have just as easily--”  
  
“Are you trying to blame me for this?” Holden asks, dangerously.  
  
“That’s not what I’m saying. That might be your own conscience filling in blanks.”  
  
“Because I was being careful. You saw the fake ID. And even if I-- even if there was some risk involved, it’s not the same, in any case.” Holden’s voice drops in tempo, in pitch. “You would leave behind a wife and a child.”  
  
“Soon to be ex-wife, but, sure. Yes, I have a son. I’m very glad I’m still alive.” Bill finds the words easy to say, so maybe he’s telling the truth.  
  
“You should try your apologies again, while you’re in a hospital bed. Might take this time,” Holden retorts, scuffing the speckled linoleum flooring with the tip of his boots.  
  
“I haven’t contacted her. I almost got myself killed because I was out there, in the dead of night, searching for you. I think it’s gonna ring a little bit too familiar to provoke all that much sympathy; if it did provoke sympathy, I wouldn’t deserve it.”  
  
“But would you _want_ it?”  
  
“Maybe. For Brian’s sake. This isn’t fair on him.”  
  
Holden dips his head in a rigidly unemotive nod.

Bill sighs. “You look like shit, Holden. You need to get a motel room, and get some sleep.”  
  
“You’re not looking so great yourself,” Holden retorts, though he’s suddenly trying to catch his reflection against the dark dawn backdrop of the windows. A palm flattens the haircut into something more recognizably boring.  
  
Bill tries to conceal a too-fond grin. “Well, I can’t sleep for at least a few more hours. I’m under observation.”  
  
“Observation?”  
  
“Nurse comes by, asks me who the president is, makes me wiggle my fingers. Very fun stuff, certainly worth staying up ‘til 6 A.M. for.”  
  
Bill didn’t bring up his injuries as a ploy for sympathy (he thinks), but it’s nice all the same to see Holden soften. “Your fingers?” he asks, forgoing his preening to step to Bill’s bedside.  
  
“They think I have some kind of nerve damage. Or brain damage. I can’t move my fingers much. The doctor says it might be from the rope being too tight, which is actually the best case scenario as I understand--”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Oh. Only the two fingers, the rest of them are fine,” Bill says, clenching and unclenching fists in the well-rehearsed demonstration. The two fingers last fingers of his right hand twitch despondently, barely curl.  
  
“You didn’t think to bring up the fact you have _brain damage_?”  
  
_Probably burying the lede here._ Bill wets his lips, makes a noncommittal hum. “I have a broken skull. Hairline fracture, which apparently, if you’re going to break your skull, is the break you want to aim for--”  
  
“Jim said you were fine,” Holden says, in a strange, strangled voice.  
  
“I am fine.”  
  
“Oh, so that’s fine, is it? A broken skull is ‘fine’?” Holden asks, awkwardly sharp.  
  
“Yes. It’s fine, I’m fine. I’m under observation, to see if I become less fine, but-- you know, no cranial bleeds, no impairment of anything but the two fingers, if that’s even anything to do with the head injury… it’s just the same as any broken bone. The headache has gone, too.”  
  
Holden sags back into a pleather, bedside chair like a fainting Victorian, head in his hands. “Why did you lie to Jim?” he accuses, through a mask of laced fingers.  
  
“I didn’t _lie_. I hadn’t got my x-ray results yet.”  
  
“Jesus Christ, Bill. You could have died,” Holden says, a hand going to the bedding beside Bill’s leg.  
  
“If I hadn’t been rescued from my own stupidity, sure,” Bill says, distracted by Holden’s proximity. “I guess we’re square for Greenwich.”  
  
Holden raises a devastatingly precise eyebrow.  
  
“Maybe I still owe you a little.”  
  
“A little. Sure.”  
  
Bill almost reaches for Holden’s hand, but he doesn’t want to confuse his next words. “...speaking of Greenwich. You were on the phone to Harry Ellis,” he prompts. “Anything I need to worry about?”  
  
Holden’s hand retreats from the bed entirely. He shakes his head. Then, seeming to realize the gesture does not suffice as explanation, he sighs and begins to speak. “I was waiting until it was late in Greenwich, to make sure he was at his home. Remind him how much he himself had to lose. I made it very clear that if there are any more mysterious phone-calls that intrude upon Bill Tench’s personal life or impact his professional livelihood, I’ll be writing a second installment of my autobiography: a salacious account of how I was taken advantage of by a married man at my publishing house. ...he didn’t admit he called Nancy, but...”  
  
Bill winces at his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s name. “You didn’t need to do that.”  
  
“I was trying to protect your career.”  
  
_What career?_ Bill rubs his eyes hard, smothering his smouldering temper. “...I appreciate the concern.”  
  
“You shouldn’t have your life ruined because of one moment of weakness,” Holden mutters.  
  
“That’s not a fair summation, Holden. I don’t really subscribe to that theory of justice, for starters. If you do something that hurts people in a ‘moment of weakness’, you should be held accountable for your actions. Besides, this hardly qualifies as one moment of weakness. I was having an extramarital affair long before we ever slept together, even if I wasn’t admitting it to myself,” Bill surmises, unhappily.  
  
"You were solving crimes," Holden defends, unconvincingly.  
  
"There were some crimes solved along the way. Sure." Bill sighs from the depths of his chest. "Whatever I'm accountable for, it's irrelevant to this. I’m sure as hell not accountable to Harry fucking Ellis.”  
  
“That would be far too easy," Holden says under his breath. "Instead, you’re accountable to your wife. So you have to live a joyless, loveless existence in perpetuity as atonement."  
  
“No idea where you’re getting all that from.”  
  
“My mistake,” Holden says, veiled and falsely receptive. “What sort of existence do you plan on living?”  
  
“I’m not exactly sure. We can’t live together. If I continue to work at the FBI, it would be inviting disaster. And there’s my son, who I’ll need to arrange shared custody, or visitations with.”  
  
Holden seems almost not to hear Bill. He’s back to watching the crescendoing, neon green on the heart rate monitor, a preoccupied frown forming.  
  
“This isn’t to say I don’t want to see you. New York to Virginia isn’t a bad flight. I could relocate to DC. Or there’s the train, depending on how your book sales continue on into the future.”  
  
“I’ll be coming to you, will I?” Holden finally responds, still without eye contact.  
  
“I’ll come see you, schedule permitting. Jabs about your writing career aside, I’m happy to pay for travel costs. Or split them. If the last two years has been reflective, you probably won’t spend all that much time at home; we can try to coordinate to see each other while we’re out on cases.”  
  
“This-- this all seems very…?” the young man starts, haltingly.  
  
“Boring?” Bill guesses.  
  
“No. ...realistic. I appreciate that, Bill. And I’m not going to be running out of money, short of a major cataclysm. I can get a place in DC too. I’m sure they need private investigators there, considering the number of law firms.”  
  
Bill opens his mouth to finally, precisely, nail down Holden’s financial standing. He thinks the better of it. With his own employment tenuous, asking about money could seem an underhand attempt at soliciting charity. Bill’s pride doesn’t allow even the suggestion of that. “I know this isn’t… isn’t enough. Certainly isn’t the stability and singular devotion you deserve. You could get that some other place, I’m sure, after all, you’re young and you’re successful and you’re--”  
  
“Bill,” Holden interrupts, hand extending once more. This time his fingertips actually graze Bill’s leg, though through bedding. “This is more of your life than I hoped to occupy, in my most implausible fantasizing. ...we should revisit this conversation when I’m certain you’re in your right mind.”  
  
“I know how I feel about you.”  
  
Holden shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Still no returned sentiments, there. “What did you mean, ‘if’ you continue to work at the FBI? Do you have a job offer pending I’m not aware of?”  
  
Bill chuckles humorlessly. “What do you think?”  
  
“...you’re not _actually_ at risk of being fired? I mean, for God’s sake, you were attacked.”  
  
“I put myself, and this investigation, at risk.”  
  
Holden scoffs up a scornful ‘hah’, but the shadowed eyes grow round with concern. He rises out of the chair, the rubber tread of his boots squeaking all of two steps to the blank wall. There the young man has stopped, barely a foot away from the washed out, cornflower blue. Bill remembers a lot of blue at Winnebago Mental Health Facility, too.  
  
Bill clears his throat, trying to recover attention. “I didn’t follow protocol. No back-up, nobody knew where I was,” he begins to tiredly unpack, “I mean, the paperwork opening this investigation probably hasn’t cleared yet, so that’s a strike against my involvement anyway--”  
  
“You’re head of your unit, Bill,” Holden cuts in with a disbelieving glance, breaking his stand-off with nobody.  
  
Bill itches at stubble coming in beneath his chin sheepishly. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have a direct superior.”  
  
Holden goes back to patrolling the hospital room like a trapped feral. Wild, adroit blue eyes seem to look for an exploitable weakness, an escape route. “Okay. Okay. We change our story: I lured you out to Homer, saying, uh-- that I-- I thought they had a stash point on the spit? I was trying to get a good story to include in my novel, so I wanted the arrest to happen then and there--”  
  
“No. Jesus. _No._ We’re not changing the story, and I’m not getting you locked up on an obstruction charge. You’re talking serious jail time--”  
  
Holden’s pacing comes to an abrupt halt. “I’m well aware of that,” he replies stiffly.  
  
“And even if your story didn’t mean sending you off to an Alaskan jail cell for god knows how long, it wouldn’t let me off the hook. However you tricked me down to Homer, I would have broken protocol,” Bill continues. “The ramifications are all mine, Holden. I’m FBI, I should have known better.”  
  
“I-- I shouldn’t have done this investigation behind your back. It’s no wonder you were paranoid,” Holden admits to the hospital wall.  
  
“Ah, now, I thought I was on your shitlist for not trusting you?” Bill can’t help but say.  
  
It doesn’t provoke any retaliation. Holden’s lips twitch, lost in thought. Still seems to want to think his way out of this. His fingers are a Gordian knot. “I-- I’m sorry, Bill.”  
  
“It’s okay,” Bill dismisses, and then, responding to an evasive eye-roll, “It really is okay. I’m not angry at you.”  
  
“Why not? You almost died. You have a fractured skull. Your wife is divorcing you. You’re going to lose your job--”  
  
“Well, I might not get fired. Maybe just demoted,” Bill interjects half-heartedly.  
  
“And it’s all because of me,” Holden concludes, brittly. “Your placidity might be a symptom. I should tell the doctor that normally you would be dressing me down for my irresponsible decisions--”  
  
“‘Dressing you down’?” Bill asks, frowning, then, “Hey, this is that bit where you try to set me off, huh?”  
  
Holden prickles. “Leave the psychology for Doctor Carr, Bill. It’s not your strong suit.”  
  
“Whatever decisions I made, were made out of love. Maybe not the healthiest love, or the most sensible love, maybe not a love that I’ve always been proud of. But I do love you. I am so happy that you are okay. Everything else… it melts away.”  
  
Holden folds his arms tight over his own chest. He tucks his chin to his chest, closes his eyes. Now, Bill can see the extent of the burgundy spread of bruising extending deep into the fold of his eyelid. “Nothing melts in Alaska,” he mutters.  
  
“Sure it does. I’ve heard summer is beautiful up here.”  
  
Holden gives in to a tired laugh. He blinks himself back into the room. “Optimism might be a symptom worth mentioning too.”  
  
“If you say so, Holden. Who knows me better than you?”  
  
Holden appears to deeply consider the rhetorical question. He doesn’t answer it. “As you pointed out, I need to get some sleep. I’m due back at the station in--” he frowns into the face of his stainless steel watch, “--oh. Five hours.”  
  
“Due back for what?” Bill asks, with more than a suggestion of nervousness.  
  
“Someone’s flying in from Chicago PD. I’m running them through my-- through the research into Dan and Dragutin. Jim will need to sleep too, so we’re going to tag in and out.”  
  
“When I said ‘tell the police your side of the story’, I did not intend the addendum ‘in an attempt to ingratiate yourself into an active homicide investigation’.”  
  
“I’m not doing anything of the sort. And I’d hardly term this an active investigation.”  
  
“Yeah? I heard Dragutin isn’t talking.”  
  
“He repeated his confession about killing Aleksander. That’s the crucial part. We’ll find dental records, get a confirmation from forensics and the case is closed.”  
  
“Closed with what? A manslaughter charge? For Dragutin only. I mean, who knows what they’ll be able to pin on Dan. He’ll go to court, contradict Dragutin’s story-- hell, he wasn’t holding the plastic bag, was he? So how do you make that anything other than an accessory charge?”  
  
“Miljković also assaulted and kidnapped an FBI agent. Not to mention the drugs they found at his apartment. I doubt he’s walking free any time soon,” Holden says darkly. “Bill, if this is going to work, this ...arrangement between us, I’ll need you to muster up some miniscule amount of respect for me. If I can help put these two away, I’m going to.” The last sentences have the weighty, determined ring of vengeance.  
  
“I think the fucking world of you, Holden. That doesn’t preclude paranoia about your irresponsible behaviour.”  
  
Holden stifles a tender smile as he leans over the bed. The kiss is nervously rushed, and very chaste. A press of warm, stuttering lips. The exhausted young man straightens back up with a grave expression. “ _I_ didn’t get kidnapped,” he says severely. Before Bill can put together a cogent response, Holden has darted out of the hospital room. The dark shadow streams past the frosted glass like something ominous beneath ocean ice, and the patter of footfalls fades quickly. Then, there’s silence.  
  
“Yes, you did. You actually got kidnapped on _purpose_ , which might be worse,” Bill argues back to an empty room. A love-struck smile rises, almost beyond his control. He raises a hand to his own lips, brushes them with two functional fingers. Dizziness, elation. More potential symptoms.  
  
It takes several minutes for Bill to descend to reality, whereupon he realizes that he didn’t ask Holden to buy cigarettes.

Another nurse comes by and Bill correctly identifies the president, and after a lot more thinking time and one incorrect guess, the governor of Alaska. His pinkie finger seems to be growing more responsive to his commands. The very chatty nurse (Casey, she tells him, as if they are friends) is dark-haired and pretty, with very sun damaged skin for her age. Casey promises to duck down to the cigarette machine beside reception while she’s on break, and at once becomes Bill’s favorite nurse.  
  
The sun is up and Bill’s exhaustion is becoming unavoidable. Breakfast comes in the form of cornflakes, a banana, and no coffee. The doctor didn’t say how many hours of observation before respite would be granted; Bill risks closing his eyes, curled on his side to avoid both the sunlight, and leaning back on a fractured skull. He doesn’t intend to sleep, in fact, he actively resists the first slip towards unconsciousness. He blinks hard, pulls himself back from the brink.  
  
He closes his eyes again.  
  
The second time, he barely fights it at all.

  
  


  
Bill wakes up to the muffled intrusion of nearby voices. The little hospital room is drenched in yellowy darkness, the afternoon sun determinedly besieging the drawn blinds. He sits up to check the clock (1:44), then turns around at the opening door.  
  
“Just checking your chart,” murmurs a nurse. Familiar, but not Casey.  
  
“Thanks for, uh, letting me sleep,” Bill says, still a touch groggy.  
  
“Oh, yes. Additional symptoms were extremely unlikely after so many hours.”  
  
Bill is about to say something extremely disagreeable along the lines of ‘why did you make me stay awake, then’, but is thankfully distracted by the packet of cigarettes and lighter sitting on his bedside table. There’s a note too, that reads: ‘You owe me a dollar! Casey.’ Bill grins around the cigarette, concentrating in on the conversation that woke him. The nurse ducks back out, leaving the door open behind her.  
  
“--well, ask the doctor then,” an unfamiliar man is saying.  
  
“He’s awake,” the nurse interjects.  
  
“You, find his doctor,” the man says, not particularly politely. A uniformed police officer that Bill can’t remember meeting steps inside the hospital room.  
  
For a split second, Bill wonders if everything has fallen apart and he’s about to be arrested by some foolhardy beat cop. “Is everything alright, Officer?” he asks, in his most commanding tone.  
  
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you, Special Agent,” the man replies reverentially, and Bill abruptly feels very foolish. “They’ve asked for you down at the station. For an interrogation. I was supposed to see if you were allowed to leave hospital for half an hour to assist.”  
  
“With which interrogation?”  
  
“Nilkojic--ovic-- uh-- the dark-haired one.”  
  
Bill glances over towards the chair bearing his roughly folded parka, suit jacket, shirt, and dress shoes with disguised enthusiasm. _Maybe I do love the work after all._ “However I can be of service,” Bill says, hoping it sounds grave and dutiful.

The police station, familiar enough due to the Eklutna case, doesn’t seem all that much busier for the new arrests. Bill is ushered past cubicles and jail cells, to the interview rooms at the back of the station. The uniformed policeman hovers nervously, never more than a step behind, on strict instructions to catch Bill in the case of a fainting spell. 

He’s all but forgotten how battered and dishevelled he must look until he sees Holden Ford, murmuring something to an unfamiliar grey-haired man in a boxy navy overcoat.

Holden is in an entirely different outfit to what he was wearing a night ago: a neat, conservatively cut suit that looks new enough to be on a shop mannequin, glossy onyx dress shoes instead of the snowboots, and no leather jacket to be seen. He’s also clean-shaven, hair flattened down, black eye hardly visible. Most infuriatingly, he seems bright-eyed and unfettered by the sleep deprivation he’s surely experiencing. Holden Ford looks eerily close to the FBI production line output that keep clogging up Bill’s peaceful cafeteria lunches. The young man murmurs something else, gestures in Bill’s direction.  
  
Bill wishes he’d had the forethought (or, perhaps, capacity for delaying gratification) to shower and shave before rushing down.  
  
“I’m sorry to drag you out,” begins the gentleman beside Holden, striding over. “I misstepped in the interrogation, mentioned your name to Mr. Nikolić-- I wanted to try to figure out why he’d confided in you so immediately, but refused to speak to anyone else. Well, then he was speaking. But it was ‘Bill’ this, and ‘Bill’ that. Wouldn’t even know he landed you up in hospital with a broken skull. You might as well be his best friend. Or his priest.”  
  
“I’ve been compared to worse than a priest,” Bill replies, with a little less enthusiasm than he feels. He’s not just relieved to be back doing his job, he’s grateful for the interrogation misstep that has him reinvolved so soon; a pivotal role in extracting a complete confession will substantially reduce his chances of being hung out to dry for the press.  
  
He watches a smug smirk twitch into Holden’s lips, then resolve to solemnity. Maybe not as innocent as a misstep. Bill wouldn’t put it past Holden to have sublimated an interviewing blunder.  
  
“Ben Theobalds,” the man introduces himself. He’s older than Bill by at least a couple of years, orange and grey hair rising back from his stark widow’s peak. “Detective Theobalds, I should say. Chicago PD sent me up. We’d assumed Aleksander Mokranjac fled the country when the investigation into Nikolić-- Ivan Nikolić, I should say-- started heating up.”  
  
“Special Agent--” Bill begins, extending a hand.  
  
“Bill Tench. I know,” the man says, with faint but unmistakable admiration. He shakes Bill's hand firmly. “...you should do seminars.”  
  
“Pardon?”  
  
“The Creighton confession was to you, right? You're batting a thousand.”  
  
Bill’s lips purse, though he resists the urge to glower at Holden. _That fucking book._ “Oh. Yes. Creighton confessed to me.”  
  
“That case in Waukegan, family murdered and their home burned down, that was our case. I never liked that the DA charged her ex-husband. Argued against it, even.”  
  
Bill feels a flicker of guilt that he’d been blaming Holden for his own notoriety. ...Holden manufactured that confession, too, he supposes. “Creighton and Bradshaw knew how DAs work, knew that they’d charge the ex-spouse. They were police, after all.”  
  
Theobalds nods. “That confession was--” the detective whistles, between his teeth. “I’ve heard the tape. You and your partner had him on the ropes five minutes in. ...is that your partner up here? I haven’t been introduced yet. Believe he’s getting a little shut eye. That would explain why a private investigator with no police credentials filled me in on case details,” he finishes, good-natured.  
  
The gloating smile dawning on Holden’s face abruptly drops. Behind the detective’s back, blue eyes narrow coolly.  
  
Bill smothers a laugh, running a hand over the sandpaper stubble of his chin. “I’d have a lot of people lining up for refunds after a seminar from me on extracting interrogations. I’ve been in the right place at the right time. Sometimes, they want to talk.”  
  
“He’s being modest. Trust me, I’ve been through _hundreds_ of interrogations of my own,” Holden says, fixing his face to a benign smile. “Bill knows his way around a confession.”


	11. Chapter 11

Bill would like to think his largely judicious tenure with the FBI stayed the executioner’s axe; he is, unfortunately, almost certain the sole reason he wasn’t unceremoniously fired was because of the heightened profile that Holden’s book garnered him (against his will, at the time). Bill’s been flown out to more funding discussions on golf courses and at country clubs in the past year than the sum total of his preceding decade at Quantico. Plenty of serious politicians alleging that their wife had read the book, not them, and then dredging up all kinds of obscure details after three or four scotches. Bill lives in constant fear that Holden will sell off the film rights. While institutional celebrity has all the glitz and glamour of being an exotic living exhibit of a travelling roadshow, it also means political and press attention. The hanging threat of headlines to the effect of ‘FBI Agent, of Madison Child Murders Fame, Fired’, and the consequent embarrassment of federal political power-brokers seems to be the career equivalent of a kevlar vest.

The fact that Bill's misstep stayed out of the Alaskan press (the only mention of the FBI was that Bill had been hospitalized during the arrest but still solicited the pivotal confession) probably didn't hurt either.

Not to say there were no consequences.

There was the chewing out from Sheppard, who accused Bill of being a glory-seeker who put ego ahead of case integrity. Bill had felt as if he was being fired, but he walked out of the office with his gun and badge. Sheppard seemed as taken aback by this outcome as Bill; somewhere, in the unreachable ether of FBI’s upper echelons, a not-so-divine intervention had occurred.  
  
No official dismissal, demotion, or suspension followed. His salary took a ten percent hit, annoying at the best of times, backbreaking while trying to pay a substantial, purely-morally-obligated child support and find his own apartment. Bill received a vaguely worded letter of censure, seemingly written by someone with next to no idea what offence they were condemning. But the unremarkable contents of the letter are largely irrelevant; formal censure is now a part of his permanent record at the FBI.  
  
Then, the field training. By all appearances, the mildest comeuppance for his fuck-up in Alaska. Joining new recruits, some barely able to order a beer, through long lectures about gun safety, de-escalation, and arrest protocols. Bill sat so far to the back his shoulders pressed into the classroom’s wooden-cladded wall, chain-smoking, razory glower daring any one of the kids to attempt conversation. During practical weapons training, Bill shot fifteen bullseyes in a row and then hid behind a storage shed (smoking, again) lest a respected colleague spot him amongst the rookies.  
  
Bill does not launch any appeals. The last thing he needs in the OPR digging around into his history with Holden Ford. He isolates himself to his basement office, avoiding the heady, exhilarating flow of the unit he built from the ground up. He finds himself relegated out of any field work, allegedly because of his still-healing skull, more likely because of the dark cloud of incompetence still hanging over his head. The Texas investigation receives official approval to expand, so Bill has plenty of local PD files to sift through, searching for LE oversight or unexplored avenues of investigation. Jim picks up a case in Georgia. Bill gets to catalogue that too.  
  
Bill gets updates on the Homer case from Detective Curley and Detective Theobalds. Dragutin has pleaded down to manslaughter and accessory to kidnapping a federal officer. After testifying about both the drug operation and Dan’s involvement in Aleksander’s death, he will be whisked away into witness protection, no time served. Bill is certain that if he didn’t botch the case, such generous terms would have never been on the table.  
  
Bill gets headaches nearly every day. Mild, buzzy things that seem to flit around his inner ear and where his skull meets his neck. He’s never had headaches like that before. He keeps tylenol on his desk and in his glovebox and on his bedside table and doesn’t tell his doctor.  
  
He finds a cramped, two bedroom apartment in DC, takes Brian two nights a week. If Brian is bothered by the new living arrangement, he indicates displeasure only with lengthy silences. He doesn’t ask questions but seems to find unhappy answers everywhere he looks with those wide, dark eyes. Nancy is coolly professional about the whole thing at first, then oddly friendly. Bill tries to be friendly too. She mentions papers coming from her lawyer, once, in a deliberately offhand manner. Bill stops wearing his wedding ring.

He doesn’t see Holden for six weeks. They speak on the phone-- at least once a week, though it doesn’t feel nearly so frequent. Conversation is nearly all about BSU cases, tidbits from Holden’s resuming study that the young man has fixated upon. Intellectual, impersonal. Two circling fencers never letting their guard down. Bill doesn’t talk about his work situation; he doesn’t want Holden feeling guilty, and he can’t bear to diminish himself in the eyes of the young man by admitting how damaged his reputation is. Bill tells himself it would be insensitive to complain about trivial professional setbacks to a man who spent so many years in a maximum security prison. Bill waits for resentment to arrive, suspicious of his own goodwill. There’s no anger, though. Sadness, perhaps. Holden is very busy, and so is Bill. Still, he’s seen Holden drop everything for a case. Holden doesn’t make plans to come to Virginia, or DC, and Bill isn’t going to be an asshole and press him on the subject.

Bill readjusts to his situation, and contents himself with looking forward to the phone calls.

  
  
In fact, seeing Holden happens almost incidentally. Jim Barney is occupied with a string of ostensibly connected child murders in Atlanta, so when the call comes in from a State Trooper about another body in Alaska with possible connection to the Eklutna Jane Doe (Eklutna Annie, the papers are calling her, which Bill considers needlessly jolly) there is only Bill available to fly out. Bill relates the update to Holden, in one of their case-dominated calls.  
  
The response is abrupt and maybe nervous: “You’re coming to Alaska?”  
  
“...'coming to’? You’re in Alaska?”  
  
“I’m in Anchorage. There were some loose ends with Aleksander’s case. That’s why I told you to call me on another number,” Holden explains.  
  
“Right. I didn’t realize that, uh, meant you were in Alaska.” _Because you didn’t mention it. Because it indicates that you could travel across the country for a case, and not a couple of states over for me._ Bill keeps his resigned discontent to himself.  
  
“When you arrive, call me. It would be good to see you,” Holden says, not sounding too forced.  
  
“Right. You too, Holden,” Bill says, awkwardly.  
  
After a few seconds of silence, the line clicks.

  
  
Bill arrives into an Alaskan landscape awoken with spring grass and sprays of summery sea-froth clouds across the perpetually snow-capped peaks. The temperature is still fairly brisk, but the white-gold overhead sun is relentless in attempts to relieve Bill of the chill. There are buds on deciduous trees, even smatters of impossibly green fresh oak leaves outside the sky blue, L-shaped motel Bill finds afresh. Staying in the same place is asking for trouble.  
  
He deliberates too long before asking for a double, though this motel looks nice enough to grant a double (or maybe queen, he’s never been sure what the difference is) without any specific request. The last thing he wants is to signal any antipathy to Holden with something as mundane as room size. He calls the young man before he even unpacks, spends the brief exchange reading too much into Holden’s anticipatory energy. He puts his tie back on, even though he’s not sure why. Maybe because Holden seemed to like his professionalism, once upon a time. Bill studies the purple stripes in the mirror and wonders if the patterning is garish.  
  
Bill hangs up his suits, sets out his toiletries, and finds himself pacing the unusually spacious motel room.  
  
Holden’s arrival is heralded, as ever, by the approaching rattle of a motorcycle engine. There’s footsteps on gravel approaching his door.  
  
Bill realizes all at once that Holden has come over to put a stop to this. A heavy, compounding weight settles upon his shoulders as he reaches for the door knob. “Hey. Come in.”  
  
“Bill,” Holden greets. His leather jacket is open, and he looks especially, untouchably handsome with the health of post-winter coloring returning to his complexion. He toys with a motorcycle helmet, then sets it down atop the ‘Explore Alaska!’ flyers fanned across the entry table. “It’s been-- too long. That’s my fault.”

“Seems like you’ve been nonstop,” Bill says permissibly. Even he can’t detect his own bitterness. Maybe it’s not there. Maybe he’s made peace.  
  
Holden nods along with an unconcealed, too-satisfied exhaustion. “Yeah. Well, I let some things pile up while I was working this case. I have to try to get back on track with my degree. Then there was some things I didn’t even realize I’d missed-- I hadn’t caught up on letters from readers, and there was some fascinating stuff there--”  
  
“You’re kidding.”  
  
Holden shakes his head. “People write in with unsolved cases all the time. ...and I got a very long letter from a man named Edmund Kemper. He got hold of a copy of my book. Claimed to be very deeply moved by my life story; particularly, the disdain my mother showed for me. He said he’d be interested in talking to me--”  
  
“Wait, Ed Kemper, as in, the Co-Ed killer?” Bill says, sitting on the end of the bed abruptly.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Bill laughs bleakly. “Let me guess, he wants you to prove his confession was also coerced, and that he’s completely innocent of killing all those poor young women.”  
  
Holden shrugs placidly. “He wants to talk about the motivation behind his crimes. I think he’s hoping I’ll write some kind of biography. ...this is an opportunity to learn about the psychology of multiple murderers from a multiple murderer. And Wendy agrees that interviews might offer insight that could be applicable to other, ongoing cases--”  
  
“So you’ve met with him?” Bill interrupts, feeling painfully protective.  
  
Holden either misses the trepidation, or opts to ignore it. “We’ve only spoken on the phone thus far.”  
  
“People like that cannot be trusted to relate their own narratives, Holden. They’re manipulators. Looking for insight from Ed Kemper is like gold panning in a sewer.”  
  
“People might say the same of me.”  
  
“Schizophrenia is not the same as--” Bill starts to retort.  
  
“Everything is information, Bill,” Holden interrupts. “Even lies. Even self-delusions. I’m not going to uncritically listen to someone like that. That doesn’t mean I won’t listen.”  
  
“...just--” Bill grimaces, “--just be careful, Holden.”  
  
The young man nods, though there’s something brazen and businesslike about even that acknowledgment. Holden seems satisfied with the meager small talk. He pulls a desk chair out from the motel’s corner, sits in it facing Bill.  
  
“Oh. Are we having… a serious talk?” Bill asks, trying to sound lighthearted. He doesn’t want to do this. He hadn’t realized how much he was looking forward to seeing Holden.  
  
Holden doesn’t respond, instead settling into uncomfortable, anticipatory stillness. Despite the absolute disparity of the setting, there’s something about the intent consideration, the deliberate space between them, that has Bill right back to Winnebago. “I lied to you and to Doctor Carr,” he finally says. “I wasn’t protecting a nice woman who sold me her stash of prescription painkillers.”  
  
“Oh. Why did you lie?”  
  
“The truth was-- the truth was horrible. And, at that point in the interviews, borderline incriminating.”  
  
“...incriminating how?”  
  
“It-- I didn’t want to lower your opinion of me, if I could help it.”  
  
Bill lets him avoid the question. “But you want to lower my opinion of you now?”  
  
Holden shakes his head morosely. “I want you to know who I am, Bill. ...I should start at the beginning. My mother had decided she needed me-- which of course, meant showing up on my doorstep with all her worldly possessions, even though I was living in a one bedroom apartment at the time and I was relegated to the couch-- and the stress of that reunion was making it more complicated to control my symptoms. I was struggling to sleep through the night. I knew insomnia would compound everything, but I was avoiding doctors lest I get an involuntary diagnosis. ...Madison is fundamentally a college town. The third long-haired student in my undergrad psych course coughed up a contact who would sell me downers.” He sighs, fiddling with a loose thread on the armrest. “I thought I was managing it. I thought everything was under control, even then. I was an early bloomer, you know,” he says. The cadence of a witticism, but the same blank affect. “I had my first symptoms while filling in college admission forms. Onset is usually later. Early twenties. ...my father didn’t get sick until his late twenties, from what I understand. Of course, medical care was even more lacklustre then. No chlorpromazine.”  
  
“But it _was_ around when you figured out you were schizophrenic. Why didn’t you just--” Bill begins to say, in a strained voice.  
  
“Go to a doctor?” Holden finishes for him, unoffended. He shrugs lamely. “Schizophrenia isn’t just hallucinations, Bill. It’s mental dysfunction. There’s a term, ‘anosognosia’, which describes a symptom very common in schizophrenics: no self-awareness of their own mental illness. Now, I wasn’t quite, uh, anosognosic. I knew I had schizophrenia, but I was absolutely convinced it was under my control, even when evidence was entirely to the contrary. I’d hazard that because of my familiarity with schizophrenia, I had no reflexive dismissal of the existence of the disease that invaded my head. At first I believed I could simply overcome it, and live a wholly rational, productive existence without any medication. I’d say I was actually recovering somewhat when I started trying to buy sleeping pills illegally. I knew I’d lost control. The suicide attempts were, ah, from a place of rationality too.”  
  
Bill feels his jaw clamp up. He leans over to his bedside table, picking up the ashtray. He drops it beside him at the foot of the bed and sets about getting his therapeutic nicotine fix.  
  
“Relative rationality,” Holden corrects, faintly nervous. “I can’t blame every defect on the illness. I was also… proud.” The young man has grown ponderous, and profoundly unhappy. “Ambitious, especially before the disease progressed.”  
  
“You’ve changed so much,” Bill quips, and has several beats of tense silence in which to regret the attempted levity. _So, Wendy was right that you avoided medical treatment specifically because it would preclude a career in federal law enforcement._ She’d been profiling a child murderer, back then. Some of the psychological insight still holds true.  
  
“But you figured that out. Doctor Carr mentioned the FBI during the ...well, interrogation you two conducted,” Holden muses, a fellow passenger on that train of thought. “I suppose my mother relayed that information in one of her police interviews.”  
  
Bill read everything Eileen Ford had to say about Holden wanting to be FBI, all two sentences of it; Wendy had sent over the photocopied, 1970 edition of The Madison Mercury that had the front page interview with Eileen Ford (The Madison Child Murderer’s Mother: ‘My Son Was Born Evil’, or something similarly salacious), including the passing mention of her son’s youthful ambitions. Bill doesn’t tell Holden that, for the simple reason that a police interview seems marginally less voluntary, and therefore marginally less of a betrayal.  
  
“I don’t resent her, for talking to the police,” Holden remarks, almost idly. “She thought I was killing children. She had a moral obligation to pursue that.”  
  
“Your mother--” Bill begins, an abrupt flare of heat rising from somewhere deep inside his belly. A long forgotten anger smoldering, waiting for oxygen.  
  
“You were right,” Holden says in an assuaging tone. “When you said she was awful. But this isn’t one of the things that I hold against her. She really did think I was a monster,” he states.  
  
Bill tries to chalk up the small victory. It’s still too close to rationalization for his liking. Too close to Holden’s old excuses. _I shouldn’t be telling a grown man how to feel about his own mother._ “As you were saying, she moved in with you.”  
  
Holden becomes absent with recollection. “She didn’t work, but she had some money coming in from-- oh, some form of welfare, she was very secretive about financials. I was, as I said earlier, too proud to apply for anything like welfare, and then I was out of my mind, not to mention suicidal. It seems rather pointless to apply for assistance that might take months to materialize, when you’re hoping not to see the end of the week. We hadn’t made rent in--” he cuts himself short, sighs. “I don’t know why I’m telling you biographical details; you’re professional enough to recall all of your investigation into my personal life. I didn’t say this to the police, but I was completely blindsided when I lost my job. I must have been making the owner, or customers, uncomfortable. So I had no income. ...I wanted to get hold of some morphine, to overdose. My father-- he jumped off a bridge, you know. He actually survived the fall, for a week. Legs and spine broken. Comatose, but he wasn’t brain dead. A woman stopped her car, swam out, dragged him to shore before he drowned. The whole thing was apparently horrific.”  
  
“How do you know all that?”  
  
“My mother told me,” Holden says with a shrug. “Evidence of his selfishness. Or how desperate he was to avoid being my father. ...if I was going to bring to a close the pointless, hopeless mess my life had become, it wasn’t going to be in public. Lenny Bruce had just overdosed on morphine, and it was all over the news. A newscaster said it would have been very peaceful. I thought I’d buy some pills, because god knows I didn’t know how to prepare morphine for injection.”  
  
“But you knew where to buy it. The guy who sold you your sleeping pills,” Bill puts together.  
  
“The dealer was… slimy. A few years older, in a terrible band. His sales were, predominantly, cannabis. But he could get things, if you asked nicely.”  
  
“So, you asked for morphine,” Bill says, sighs. “...I don’t see why you felt you had to lie, to the police, or to me and Wendy.”  
  
“I didn’t have any money, Bill. As I said, I’d lost my job.”  
  
Bill feels a purely professional chagrin, that this didn’t come up in his first round of interviews. He knew Holden Ford lost his job months before the murders occurred. Holden said as much in one of the interviews. And morphine is expensive, even in non-lethal doses. Should have caught him out on that. “Ah.”  
  
Holden clears his throat in a pained, unnecessary way. “I performed ...sexual acts in exchange for two morphine pills. It wasn’t, ah, explicitly transactional. But it was-- there was an understanding. He wouldn’t give me enough to OD. Said it was too expensive, but maybe he’d worked me out.” He doesn’t look up. “I figured I’d be dead soon, one way or another. No lasting mark left on my body or my mind.” His voice wavers over those words, and he scowls with self-censure. “Or my soul. If I were to possess such a thing.”  
  
“Holden--”  
  
“I’m not done. After I lost my apartment-- I mean, after I was out of prison, when I was sleeping in my car before you--” Holden trails off again. He blinks. No real tears, but an unhappy sparkle forms amongst the waterline. That seems to annoy him, too. “I needed money to buy bus tickets. Train tickets. I needed documents filed in a Chicago court. I looked him up, he hadn’t-- ten years, and he hadn’t moved. I borrowed seventy dollars from him.”  
  
Bill is failing to keep his hand, and cigarette, steady. He draws in a breath, then stubs it out in a controlled burst of anger, leaving it half smoked on the ashtray.  
  
Holden hasn’t looked up to notice. “He was almost nice about it. Said if I needed money, I could come by again. ...I did pay him back. After the settlement came through.”  
  
“Why are you telling me all this? ...are you in some kind of trouble? Is he--”  
  
“Bill, I’m telling you this because you deserve the truth about what sort of person I am.”  
  
“...and this is why you’ve been so withdrawn?”  
  
Holden’s lips tighten down. “I suppose it’s a contributing factor,” he says, awkwardly slow.  
  
“Well, Holden, it was a dumb fucking thing to do. You shouldn’t have been trying to kill yourself. You could have got help-- maybe not perfect help, but help that would have been enough for someone as smart and self-sufficient as you--” Bill picks up the cigarette to take a calming drag, finds it unlit. Struggling to keep his voice level, he continues, “Of course I fucking hate that you did this. Some shithead drug dealer took advantage--”  
  
“I knew what I was doing. I told you, the suicidal ideation was during my most rational--” Holden begins, guarded and steady. He’s shifted back almost imperceptibly in his chair. If it wasn’t Bill’s job to notice shit like this, he would seem almost emotionless.  
  
Bill holds up a hand to silence him. “I’m not-- I’m not disgusted by you. Or whatever reaction you’re preempting. I’m mostly angry, at myself, that I left things on such a bad note with you that you slept in your car rather than give me a fucking call--”  
  
“Bill,” Holden says, rising from the seat. He folds his arms, unfolds them too quickly. “You’re allowed to be upset at me. I know I’ve made some terrible mistakes. You are paying for some of them. Now you know Harry Ellis wasn’t taking advantage of someone who didn’t know any better. I understood what was happening. ...it’s your job to look for patterns, so look at the goddamn pattern.”  
  
“Whatever you did with Ellis is none of my business, except insofar as you failed to mention it when you asked me to consult on the Greenwich case, Holden.”  
  
Holden chuckles unhappily. “You don’t believe that.”  
  
“And I’m responsible for my own decisions--” Bill says, frowning more.  
  
“So am I. I decided to sleep with a married man, and I decided to sleep with a drug dealer for--”  
  
“Holden, for Christ’s sake, sit down and stop trying to control this conversation,” Bill snaps. “I’ve told you I love you. I’m not stupid. I know you’re capable of destructive behaviour, that hurts you, and hurts the people around you. Just like you know-- just like you know I don’t always keep my fucking temper, okay?” he finishes, having reigned himself down to a conversational decibel.  
  
“I know that about you. And I love you. I’ve loved you for so long, Bill,” Holden says, like a goodbye. “...I want your decision to be informed. That’s all.”  
  
“Loving you is far from a conscious decision.”  
  
“Proximity to me, on the other hand…” Holden trails off, folding his arms. “Proximity is voluntary,” he finishes, black and expectant.  
  
Bill leans forward, a flat palm resting against Holden’s shoulder, slowly curling to grip the leather jacket. “It is voluntary. I’m here because I want you in my life. I want as much of you as you have to give. ...you don’t have to be alone just because you’ve fucked up before.”  
  
Holden looks first at the point of contact, then meets Bill’s eyes seriously. He’s leaning in. It’s too quick for Bill to think much, except to notice his own relief.  
  
The kiss is unexpectedly comfortable: unhurried, Holden with a steadying hand on Bill’s chest. Holden has next to no stubble; his cheeks, his lips, even his manner is very soft. Inexperienced, in a manner of speaking. Bill’s hand moves up, to cradle his neck. And then, Holden gradually straightens his spine, breaking the contact, though they’re still leaning towards one another.  
  
“I’m sorry. I’ve been smoking,” Bill mutters, looking guiltily toward the ashtray.  
  
Holden’s lips twitch to a smile. He rubs his eyes. “I hate the taste of cigarettes a little less on you.”  
  
Bill doesn’t speak, revelling in the guiltless affection. “...for what it’s worth, if the plot of your autobiography turns out to be plagiarized and you’re sued into destitution, I will spot you five grand, no questions asked,” he half-jokes. _Probably the hard limit on sudden cash expenditure, with my fairly dire financials._  
  
“And if you get fired over the next skull fracture you waltz into, I’m happy to do the same for you,” Holden returns, a little barbed even through the smile.  
  
Bill puts a hand over his heart as if wounded. “The offer’s there, is all I’m saying.”  
  
“...thank you,” Holden seems to force out. Then, begrudgingly, his shoulders untense. His happiness, his relief, shows again. He leans in, resting his forehead against Bill’s, eyes closed.  
  
“I know you got a motel room of your own, but, uh,” Bill murmurs, then shrugs when he can’t summon the courage to finish his own sentence. “You can stay here, if you want,” he makes himself say.  
  
Holden spares only the briefest consideration for the weighty offer. His eyes don’t open. “I’ll go pick up my things,” he says, simply.

When the buzz of Holden’s bike fades into peak hour traffic, Bill is left alone with paranoia about Holden being seen carrying a suitcase to his motel room. Seen by whom, he’s not sure. Bill has a vague vision of some shadowy photographer documenting his transgressions. In Alaska? Who would even know he was arriving? Who would care that much about the personal life of a mildly-disgraced FBI agent?  
  
He fetches his files from the base of his suitcase. Among them, right at the bottom, the now defunct Homer files that Bill still finds himself compulsively rereading. Now, it is with fresh intent. Trying to figure out why Holden might be back in Alaska.  
  
The motorcycle doesn’t arrive, but there’s an approach to the front door. Bill wonders if Holden is as paranoid as him.  
  
“Not locked,” Bill calls, which Holden should know.  
  
Holden lets himself in, a thick messenger bag slung over one shoulder, and a duffle against his back. He puts his helmet down again, but seems nervous to set down his luggage.  
  
“Hey-- did you see the photograph Aleksander’s friend in Chicago found?” Bill says, waving Holden over to the fan of files on the bed. Transparent bait, but it does get the young man to remove the duffle bag and inch closer.  
  
“Detective Curley faxed it to me. I haven’t seen it in this detail,” Holden says, closing the distance to swipe the high-quality print. Aleksander Mokranjac leans on a brick wall, cradling a cheap beer, ear-length hair slicked back and a crooked, unguarded grin directed towards the photographer. Taken just a month before his departure for Alaska. He looks very young, and very alive. “Do you have--”  
  
Bill preempts Holden with his own commissioned forensic recreation of facial features. “Close. Very close. The mouth is a little different. With the lips so decayed, that was inevitable.”  
  
Holden nods along. “He must have lost weight in Alaska,” he murmurs. His gaze does not avert from the side-by-side comparison.  
  
“Heroin abuse will do that. ...so, what loose ends are you tying up? You didn’t tell me why you were coming back up to Alaska,” Bill prompts.  
  
Holden still doesn’t look up. That resigned longing reminds Bill of the reluctance with which people hand over photos of long-missing loved ones. “I have a meeting with the district attorney,” the preoccupied young man murmurs.  
  
Bill smiles wryly. “Ah. I was planning on going in myself to try to get him to drop the charge down. This is what you get with elected prosecutors: the political mandate for law and order that invariably manifests as overcharging high profile cases.”  
  
“...this isn’t my fault,” Holden sulks, finally placing the two pictures back on the bed.  
  
“Your fault? Why would it be your fault?”  
  
Holden squints. “Bill, they’re considering the first-degree charge because of the article I’m writing for The Chicago Tribune. ...I had to send my research to the prosecution team. It would have come out before the trial; I didn’t want to wrongfoot them and blow the case. I wasn’t expecting them to use it.”  
  
“You’re writing an article on Aleksander?” Bill asks, alarmed at once.  
  
“No. Well, tangentially. It’s about two cases in Chicago, ruled accidental drownings, that I believe may actually be murders.”  
  
“For a newspaper, you said?”  
  
“I mentioned the investigation to my agent. They put me in touch with their friend, who edits the crime section. It’s a guest column, I’m not taking a job in Chicago.”  
  
There’s several urgent, apprehensive follow-up questions already on Bill’s tongue. He reconsiders, exhales into placidity as a marksman aiming down his sights. “...okay.”  
  
Holden’s taut features take a few seconds to relax. Probably several layers of logic deep in an argument that did not manifest. “...okay,” he echoes, unconvinced.  
  
“Do you want my opinion on those two cases before your theory goes to print?” Bill asks, setting aside his papers.  
  
“I always want your opinion,” the younger man tells him dryly.  
  
Bill shrugs obligingly, sliding over the thick comforter to pick up the case of his reading glasses. “Do you have your research in one of those--?”  
  
Holden is already setting down his messenger bag to sort through it, then a thick manilla file within. He pulls out a neat wad of typed, stapled pages and proffers it in Bill's direction.  
  
Bill settles the reading glasses on his nose and takes the document. Holden sits all of two inches away on the bed, craning his neck a little to read along.  
  
Bill stops flicking through the typed pages to ascertain length and lowers his glasses glance dubiously at Holden. “Are you going to watch me reading the thing?”  
  
“Just to make sure you pay attention to the the right--”  
  
“Okay, why don’t you explain it to me.” The stapled pages lower to brush against Bill’s knee.  
  
Then Holden’s hand is on his, swiping the papers purposefully. He ignores the first few pages of his own writing, fans deep into the text. “‘Slobodan was talking to Dragutin about doing CPR to fill my lungs with water, so I would look like I’d drowned. Slobodan said that Alex was assumed to have drowned, but that they’d stage my body better anyway.’” Holden stops reading, looking up and seeming to finally register how very close they’re seated. There’s a nervous, fidgeting blink.  
  
Then Bill registers the familiar words. “Is that my statement to Anchorage PD? ...I had a fractured skull, my language in reports is usually far more precise--”  
  
Holden’s expression has turned almost demure, if not for the impatient fingers poised to turn the page. “Mhm. So, this CPR idea came from Dan. Pump your lungs full of seawater through mechanical force. So they planned on killing you, then staging it to look as if you endured a head wound in a car crash into water, fell unconscious and ultimately drowned. Well, they mention moving your car, in any case. Perhaps they were just going to park it somewhere far from Homer, and arrange the murder to look as if you’d slipped onto rocks. But still, the CPR part bothered me.”  
  
“Yeah, I don’t think they realised the sort of forensics that a dead federal agent would--”  
  
Holden talks over him impatiently: “I thought: perhaps Dan doesn’t know how CPR works.”  
  
“I mean, he’s a drug dealer, not a doctor--” Bill can tell, immediately, that his response came too early. Holden looks expectant, waiting for a revelation. “...ah. The chest compressions wouldn’t actually fill the lungs with water. You’d need to, uh--” Bill taps his sternum thoughtfully.  
  
“Fill the lungs mechanically, as I said. Pouring water, and mechanically inflating the lungs should cause a dead body to-- inhale water, as far as forensics can tell. The original CPR method before mouth-to-mouth did this.”  
  
“I know,” Bill informs him, then feels old. “You lay them on their stomach and--”  
  
“That was the second method. The Silvester Method was the original. The person needing CPR would be on their back. You raise and lower the elbows, and that inflates and deflates the lungs,” Holden explains, sharp and passionate and lost to his own momentum.  
  
“And do you have some kind of evidence that Dan intended to use the ‘Silvester Method’? Or is this conjecture?” Bill asks, though the query itself is lost amongst a gentle, adoring tone. Almost another admission of love. He can’t help it. There’s something amazing about this man.  
  
Holden is lost for words, which hopefully isn’t a reflection of the thoroughness of his investigation. He blinks heavily, like he’s losing himself to a sedative, lower lip caught under his front teeth-- then he seems to register the critique. “There are two drowning cases in Chicago, ‘71 and ‘75. One, a convicted drug dealer. Male. The other, a woman, never identified. One body found in Skogie Lagoon, one in the Chicago River. Both had water in their lungs, but had a high enough BAC that it was assumed they fell in while drunk. This goes to pattern, in a legal sense. And then there’s the bag they found Dan’s boot,” Holden says, pulling a folded plastic square from his bag.  
  
“What am I looking at?” Bill says, pushing his reading glasses back up his nose. _Holden brought props for his meeting with the DA. Of course._  
  
“Heavy duty. High density polyethylene. The drug dogs can’t smell through it, according to Dragutin. ...obviously, not this bag. But this is the brand. You can buy them from certain hardware stores.”  
  
“I don’t know about getting past drug dogs. Dogs can usually--”  
  
“I did say ‘according to Dragutin’,” Holden says, pedantic yet fond. He’s carefully unfolding the plastic bag like an auctioneer unveiling a lost Vermeer. “This is what they would have killed you with. Suffocation.”  
  
Bill looks grimly at the unforgiving plastic bag between Holden’s hands. Unnatural blue and completely opaque. No viciously honed edge, no heavy chrome barrel, but in the context of that night on the Homer Spit with his skull busted and his hands tied, the plastic bag would have been a deadly weapon.  
  
Holden is regarding the plastic with morbid intensity, too. “Missy Rupert’s death was established as asphyxiation because small particles of broken plastic from the bag were found in her lung tissue. The woman who brought this case to me had read my book; she wanted Alex’s body exhumed to check for plastic in the lungs, because that was in the book. Strangely prescient, all things considered.”  
  
“Forensics found plastic particles...?” Bill asks doubtfully. He’s read the forensics report; he knows they didn’t.  
  
“Well, no,” Holden admits easily. “A bag like this is industrial strength. For containing hazardous waste, or sharp debris. Much too thick to have almost imperceptible holes torn in it by someone struggling to breathe,” he says, as he places the plastic bag back deep into the accordion cardboard file. “His uncle uses the same bags.”  
  
“So ...you think Dragutin lied? This was premeditated, that it was an established murder method?”  
  
Holden shrugs. “Not necessarily. Dragutin thought it was an accident. But I think Dan knew what he was doing when he ordered Dragutin to keep holding the bag. Well, I should say, thought he knew what he was doing. I don’t think Dan spontaneously figured using the Silvester Method to simulate a drowning, that night they were discussing how to murder you; he knew what to do because he’d done it before, in Chicago. ...and I think, if Miljković is considering three possible first-degree murder charges levelled at him, his no snitching policy might waver.”  
  
“He has been charged. Hasn’t flipped,” Bill points out, without looking up. He flicks through the pages, the first two of which are Holden’s article. He only skim-reads that, rushing to his own police report, reliving the conversation clumsily described. How had Dan sounded, when he mentioned CPR? Not speculative. Confident. Still-- “ ...he could have just been mistaken about how CPR worked. Aleksander didn’t have water in his lungs, so you can’t draw too much of a parallel on MO. Not to mention, how were they planning on passing this off as an accidental drowning, when they cut off the identifying tattoo? They couldn’t have known it would take that long for his body to be found.”  
  
“Because rigor mortis set in before they could reach Homer. You can’t use the Silvester Method after that. The phone call to Ivan takes place from a phone booth in Homer, when Dan realizes his plan is falling apart. Ivan advises him to cut off the identifying tattoo, and dump him far out to sea.”  
  
“Ivan isn’t talking either. So this is conjecture about the contents of the call, I take it.”  
  
Holden takes the pages again, in an impolite tug. “The woman pulled out of Chicago River had a few tattoos, but one was brand new. Bloody. One of the few leads the police had. Blue ink. A big, solid triangle.” The bright-eyed man has found the colour photograph of an autopsy close-up. “Uncle Ivan’s right hand man did tattoos in his garage,” he murmurs.  
  
Bill examines the ugly, incongruous tattoo that Holden hands him over. A triangle, not quite equilateral. Clumsily, thickly filled in lines. Very different to the other blue ink tattoos on Dan, and on Dragutin, and on Aleksander. A cool thrill, almost like vertigo, climbs his spine and raises the regrowth around his shaved nape. As if he is elevated above the mundane sprawl of criminality, seeing grand patterns twinkling into view. Like his plane is dipping down towards a familiar cityscape. “Okay-- so--” Holden is watching with a vindicated, congratulatory smirk. Bill rolls his eyes.  
  
“So?” Holden prompts, self-satisfied, still in that intimate proximity.  
  
“You think this tattoo was a cover-up for another, identifying tattoo,” Bill mutters, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. “So there’s a pattern. Gang-related killing. Destroying or covering up identifying tattoos. Suffocation with a heavy-duty garbage bag. Disposing the bodies in water, on the assumption that forensics will rule the death a drowning.”  
  
Holden doesn’t blink. He expects Bill to get this stuff instantly; he expects Bill to be a better detective than he is. He knows Bill so intimately, yet seems to always anticipate a man Bill has never once lived up to.  
  
Bill tries not to bask too much in Holden’s high regard. He blows smoke and nods to himself. “We’ve got an MO. Do we have a motive for either of the crimes in Chicago? Concrete proof they knew Ivan? How do we prove any of this?”  
  
Holden raises an eyebrow. “... _‘we’_? Oh, Bill. You don’t seriously think I’ll ever let you near one of my cases again?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry, endings come so slow to me.
> 
> Thank you for your patience, if you haven't unsubscribed. And so many thanks to all of you who have encouraged me through this.


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